First Screw Battery

The First Screw Battery is a specialized military formation defined by portable artillery, mule transport, technical discipline, and obedience within a large imperial command system. In the camp narrative at Rawal Pindi, it appears not as an abstract institution but through the working identity of its breech-piece mule, Billy, whose account of climbing with guns makes the battery’s expertise and dependence on animals unmistakable.

Nature and Equipment

The battery uses screw-guns, described as small cannons made in two pieces that are screwed together when needed. Their construction allows them to be carried into mountains wherever a mule can find a road, making the unit especially useful for fighting in rocky country. The weapon is therefore inseparable from the animal that transports it: the battery’s mobility, concealment, and firepower depend on a mule capable of carrying equipment over ledges and broken ground.

Billy identifies himself as the breech-piece mule of number two gun of the First Screw Battery. His title shows that the organization is divided into precise technical assignments rather than treating its animals as interchangeable beasts. The battery’s equipment includes a balanced saddle and the parts of the gun that must be carried and assembled at altitude. Its method is built around keeping the load stable, keeping the animal quiet, and bringing the weapon into position without exposing the unit unnecessarily.

Training and Field Method

Billy presents the battery’s work as a learned science rather than brute endurance. A mule may have to climb a mountain, hang on with all four feet and its ears, creep and wriggle along a narrow route, and emerge hundreds of feet above the ground on a ledge barely wide enough for its hoofs. There it must remain still while the men assemble the guns, after which the small shells can be dropped toward targets far below.

Concealment is part of this expertise. Billy explains that the battery avoids appearing against the skyline because an exposed silhouette can draw fire, even if avoiding it requires a detour of a mile. The mule leads the battery in this kind of climbing, so its military value lies not only in carrying weight but also in understanding terrain, balance, silence, and tactical exposure. The organization’s skill is thus distributed between human direction and animal competence.

Discipline and Animal Labor

The battery’s military order is embodied in the relationship between drivers, equipment, and animals. At the receiving camp, elephants are chained by their hind legs to stout pickets, and additional ropes are fitted to the new animals. In the same broader camp world, the mule, horse, elephant, and bullock are all placed within systems of harness, ropes, chains, and commands. The First Screw Battery belongs to this material network of organized animal labor, where mobility is produced through restraint as well as training.

The animals are not portrayed as silent machines. During a night disturbance, Billy leaves his lines after hearing that the camels have broken loose, while a young mule runs from the confusion and the gun bullocks walk away after being trampled. Billy calls the bullocks “gentlemen,” a sign that panic has disrupted the normal vocabulary of military hierarchy. Yet the episode also distinguishes camp disorder from field discipline: Billy admits that he may stampede for amusement when confined too long, but asks what happens on active service, where the battery’s real demands begin.

Command Structure and Significance

The battery forms one link in a vast chain of command. The camp’s stated principle is that an order is given and obeyed: the animal obeys its driver, the driver obeys the sergeant, and authority rises through lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, brigadier, and general to the Viceroy, who serves the Empress. The First Screw Battery therefore represents more than a weapons unit. It is a practical example of how imperial power joins technical specialization to hierarchical obedience.

The animals’ conversation introduces a tension within that system. When the young mule asks why fighting is necessary, the troop-horse answers that it is because they are told to, while Billy reduces the principle to “Orders.” Their replies expose the difference between military function and moral explanation: the organization can teach an animal how to move, hide, carry, and fire without giving it an independent reason for war. The battery’s impressive competence consequently carries an ironic underside. Its order is real, but that order rests on commands passed downward until they reach creatures who can obey without determining the purpose of the conflict.

At the Rawal Pindi review, the same structure is presented as a spectacle of collective control over thirty thousand men and thousands of camels, elephants, horses, bullocks, and mules. The First Screw Battery’s distinctive contribution is its ability to make artillery portable in places where ordinary military movement would be difficult. Its significance lies in that union of engineering, animal endurance, concealment, and obedience: a small cannon becomes a mountain weapon because an entire organization has learned to make bodies, tools, and orders move together.