Effective ammunition is one of the most im portant factors of modern warfare, and the one great factor in determining prevailing tactics, methods of defense, and equipment of men and materials. Every improvement in rapidity of fire of weapons increases the anxiety about the supply of ammunition in the field; nevertheless, it must be remembered that, although separate battalions or batteries have cn occasion been without ammunition, the troops as a whole have never suffered from this want. The soldier car ries a considerable number of rounds on his person, and at the very opening of a battle the company ammunition wagons are available; when they are exhausted, they go to the nearest ammunition column, replenish, and return as quickly as possible. The field artillery uses its limber ammunition only when no other is avail able, that of the caissons being used first; the cswpty caissons being replaced by others from the second 6chelon of the battery, and the latter obtaining further supplies from the ammunition columns.
The question of ammunition was one of the subjects of the Peace Congress held at The Hague in the summer of I S99, and strong recommenda tions were made to discountenance the use of explosive or expanding bullets. The English in
the Sudan, and in smaller Indian punitive expe ditions, found that the smallness, shape, and velocity of a modern rifle bullet had not a suf ficiently deterring, effect on the charging masses of tribesmen, and frequently used the so-called dumdum bullet, which is made of softer metal and expands or contracts. During the Boer War dum-dum and explosive cartridges were fre quently found after the various battles, each side charging the other with having used them. In the Spanish-American War of 1898-99 the small, clean-cut wounds caused by the Krag-Jorgensen (United States) and Mauser (Spanish) bullets were found fatal only in a small percentage of cases. Instances were frequent where men con tinued to fight for some time after being hit.
In England, and Europe generally, all govern ment-made ammunition is manufactured at the government arsenals. See ARSENAL.
The word ammunition is still retained in the English services in its early English form, as pertaining to certain forms of military supplies; ammunition shoes, ammunition socks, ammuni tion bread, ammunition shirts, etc., as distinct from the same articles supplied from purely civil sources. See PROJECTILE; FUZE; PRIMER; CARTRIDGE; ORDNANCE; ARTILLERY, etc.