The hedgerows, standing crops, woods, and lanes must be used to afford concealment in advancing or retiring from position to position, and scouts must be specially trained in finding the easiest _concealed_ way from field to field by gates, gaps, or through stiles. The way from the road or lane to the selected position must be always marked by sticks or broken branches which are placed to indicate the direction of gates or gaps, or where a turning has to be made. The usual procedure will be for the scouts to work across country on one or both sides of the road. The section commander, who should be mounted, will select the position for the guns, and scouts from each gun will be sent out to guide them to the positions. The carriages and ammunition cart must move up the road to the nearest point to the position, and scouts should select and mark the easiest way to the carriages. Careful co-operation between the guns and carriages will often enable the latter to greatly facilitate movement, by pushing up by-lanes or across fields to a position near the guns. Ammunition will usually have to be carried to the guns by hand, so that great pains must be taken to get the cart as near the position as possible. The selection of the position will be governed by the facilities it presents for surprising the enemy in close formation at effective range. The range must be accurately found, and fire must only be opened by order of the section commander. In selecting a position care must be taken that it offers perfect concealment from view, and that the guns can retire under cover to their carriages. The neighbourhood of conspicuous objects, such as single trees, a gap in a fence, etc., must be carefully avoided, and care must be taken to secure a good field of fire for as great a distance as possible to the front, while the flanks and any cover within effective range which the enemy might occupy must be watched by scouts. It is in this matter of careful reconnaissance, of selecting ground and occupying or watching all neighbouring cover, that the successful use of machine guns in enclosed country mainly depends. The enemy is obliged by the nature of the country to move in close formation to pass defiles, roads, gaps, or to avoid crops, woods, and villages, and it is the intelligent anticipation of where this will occur that gives the machine gun its chance for decisive action. The hedges, orchards, lanes and woods, and other features will afford endless opportunities for bringing _flanking_ fire to bear on the enemy. Nothing is so effective, and the morale effect on an enemy who is enfiladed at close range renders it usually decisive.