Artillery

AERIAL BOMBARDMENT continues to take its toll during the allied air campaign against Iraq, but another kind of bombardment is yet to come. "It is with artillery that war is made," said Napoleon Bonaparte, and casualty figures from America's most recent wars still bear him out.In World War II, shrapnel (fragments from exploding artillery shells) caused 53 percent of U.S. battle deaths and 62 percent of wounds. In Korea shrapnel caused 59 percent of the deaths and 61 percent of the wounds. Even in the close-quarter fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, where enemy rifle and machine gun fire caused the majority of deaths, enemy shell fragments still caused 36 percent of the deaths and 65 percent of the wounds.

Growing up, George E. Raley Jr. heard stories that the military had conducted some sort of testing during World War II on the quiet Southern Maryland peninsula known as Newtowne Neck. As an adult, he would learn that his father had assisted in experiments performed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to develop a weapon credited with helping the Allies win the war in Europe. So he was not particularly surprised this month when the sands of the peninsula where he once camped, swam and picked blackberries shifted to reveal a small but substantial stockpile of World War II-era munitions.

After nearly a century, Maryland's venerable 110th Field Artillery will soon fade into the history books. Its colors will be furled for the last time in a solemn military deactivation ceremony that is open to the public and begins at 10 a.m. Saturday at its headquarters at the Pikesville Armory, 610 Reisterstown Road. The unit, which traces its heritage to earlier artillery units in the Revolutionary War and the Battle of North Point during the War of 1812, is being phased out because of an Army reorganization.

Edwin F. "Eddie" Hauser, a decorated World War II veteran who landed at Normandy on D-Day, died Sept. 24 of kidney failure at his Ellicott City home. He was 94. Mr. Hauser was born and raised in Baltimore. His mother was a baker, and his father died when he was 3. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute, he worked at Bethlehem Steel Corp. at Sparrows Point. Mr. Hauser enlisted in the Army in 1941 and served in Europe with the fabled 29th Division. A technical sergeant assigned to an artillery unit, he landed at Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944, with the 29th Division.

Members of the Maryland Army National Guard's 2-110th Field Artillery battalion, Battery A of Westminster, are experts in "hasty displacement."Working as a synchronized team, Battery A can pack up a 105mm howitzer cannon and be ready to move to a new location within minutes.The Westminster battery is one of three in the 2-110th, headquartered in Pikesville, Baltimore County. Two batteries are on base.Speed, precision, teamwork and attention to detail mark every member'straining, whether under heavy attack or just needed elsewhere, usinglive ammunition or blanks, working day or night.

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VIENNA, Austria -- The Bosnian Serbs have far more heavy weapons than they formally declared and have resorted to subterfuge to avoid destroying their excessive stock, said Western officials who have been meeting for the past two days.The violations of the Balkans arms-reduction agreement were determined by the officials who have been exchanging intelligence information in closed meetings.The greatest discrepancy is in the number of artillery pieces, the weapons that terrorized Sarajevo and laid waste to villages throughout Bosnia, according to U.S. and European intelligence agencies.

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip --Angry Palestinians marched in and mourning yesterday for 18 civilians killed by Israeli artillery, baring for cameras the battered faces of two dead children. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel offered to ease tensions by meeting the Palestinian president "anytime, anyplace." "I am very uncomfortable with this event," Olmert said at a business conference in Tel Aviv. "I'm very distressed." Technical failure Saying that he had investigated the artillery strike, which spurred Hamas to warn that it might resume suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, Olmert called the shelling Wednesday a mistake caused by technical failure.

The Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, ended the Seven Days' Battles, as overwhelming Union artillery turned back an aggressive Confederate assault after a week of fighting. It was an impressive performance for the Northern army's artillery. Thousands of Union infantrymen and more than 100 artillery pieces occupied Malvern Hill. The narrow plateau, a mile north of the James River, provided Union forces with a strong defensive position. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan considered Malvern Hill an important location for protecting the trains of Union supplies and ammunition along the James.

WASHINGTON - Having decided to cancel the Crusader artillery system, the Pentagon plans instead to speed the development of precision-guided artillery rounds and rockets and to upgrade an artillery system the Army has been using for 40 years, an official said yesterday. Michael Wynne, a Pentagon acquisition official, said the $9 billion set aside for the Crusader would be shifted into other Army weaponry. The money will allow the systems to be delivered earlier - some by 2008, when the Crusader howitzer was scheduled for delivery.

When "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" posted a casting call for "Hardcore Eddie," every muscleman-actor on the way up in Hollywood went out for the part. They knew the character would be on-screen during crucial, cataclysmic action, right alongside Shia LaBeouf and Tyrese Gibson, who plays Epps, the leader of Eddie's good-guy mercenary crew. Baltimore-born Lester Speight walked into the audition and knew he'd nail it. "A lot of times, guys make jokes — they see you walk in and they say, 'Well, we might as well go home now.' For this one, I thought to myself — yeah, you might as well go home.' " He was right.

North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire along their disputed western sea border today, two days after the North designated no-sail zones in the area, the military and news reports said. North Korea fired several rounds of land-based artillery off its coast, an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no casualities or damage were immediately reported. South Korea, in response, immediately fired warning shots from a marine base on an island near the sea border, according to Seoul's Yonhap news agency.

When Ferd H. Reuwer served in Maryland's 110th Field Artillery in the early 1930s, they still used horses to haul cannons around the unit's training site in Pikesville. The horses were phased out in 1935, but the National Guard unit carried on, storming Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944, turning out for the riots in Baltimore after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and guarding Washington after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The proud history of the 110th, which traces its roots back to the Revolutionary War, came to an end on Saturday morning when members rolled up their red and gold flags and sheathed them for good.

After nearly a century, Maryland's venerable 110th Field Artillery will soon fade into the history books. Its colors will be furled for the last time in a solemn military deactivation ceremony that is open to the public and begins at 10 a.m. Saturday at its headquarters at the Pikesville Armory, 610 Reisterstown Road. The unit, which traces its heritage to earlier artillery units in the Revolutionary War and the Battle of North Point during the War of 1812, is being phased out because of an Army reorganization.

DEWEY BEACH, Del. - Long decades past its purpose, the mammoth concrete tower remains anchored deep in the sands of southern Delaware, a curiosity that captivates beach-goers . Sixty years ago, this stretch of dunes and scrub brush was part of the U.S. Army's Fort Miles. Tower 3, next to the Dewey Beach bath house, and ten others like it had as their mission defending factories along Delaware Bay from Nazi attack Now, two small preservation groups are working with state officials to refurbish Tower 3 and open it to the public, much as they did another tower near the fort's main buildings outside Lewes.

SULAYMANIYA, Iraq -- Turkey unleashed air and artillery strikes against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq yesterday, officials here said, five days after the Turks completed a major ground offensive in the mountainous border region. Turkey declared at the time that it had achieved its goal of denying the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a free hand to attack its territory from sanctuaries in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. But U.S. and Turkish military analysts were skeptical that the operation would have more than a temporary effect.

The cannon at Gettysburg, as one young officer said, "became things of life - not implements, but comrades." The artillery battle that took place on the first day of fighting played a decisive role in the battle, granting the Union forces the time they needed to regroup and withstand Gen. Robert E. Lee's most serious challenge on Union soil. Artillery soldiers were a unique group serving a vital function in the war. This was something they took pride in, with young officers often declining promotions that would separate them from their guns.

When Ferd H. Reuwer served in Maryland's 110th Field Artillery in the early 1930s, they still used horses to haul cannons around the unit's training site in Pikesville. The horses were phased out in 1935, but the National Guard unit carried on, storming Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944, turning out for the riots in Baltimore after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and guarding Washington after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The proud history of the 110th, which traces its roots back to the Revolutionary War, came to an end on Saturday morning when members rolled up their red and gold flags and sheathed them for good.

Thomas F. Cadwalader Jr., an insurance agent and World War II veteran wounded in the D-Day invasion of France, died Monday of prostate cancer at Joseph Richey House in Baltimore. The former Tuxedo Park resident was 94. Mr. Cadwalader was born in 1912 at a West Mount Royal Avenue home to parents who traced their lineage to a Declaration of Independence signer and a Revolutionary War general. "He was a very modest man, and a man of the utmost integrity. A very loyal friend," said his wife of 61 years, the former Phyllis Jane "Jonnie" Clegg Norrie.