yards of front, supplemented by machine guns, and they fired a barrage of 60% shrapnel, 30% HE and 10% smoke 200 yards ahead of the advancing troops. In the first half of 1918, 18-pounder ammunition requirements were predominantly (about 60%) shrapnel, moving back to equality between shrapnel and HE in the final months of the war. Chemical and smoke shells were each around 5% of the total. By the end of the war, the modern "empty battlefield" was evolving, with troops learning to avoid open spaces, and the light field gun was becoming obsolete, with an increasing use of light machine guns, light mortars and field howitzers which, with their high trajectory, were able to drop shells onto even deeply sheltered enemy troops on reverse slopes that field guns could not reach. The 18-pounder Mk IV, with its box trail which allowed it to fire in a high trajectory, had begun its evolution into the more versatile 25-pounder gun-howitzer. At the Armistice, there were 3,162 18-pounders in service on the Western Front, and they had fired approximately 99,397,670 rounds. Between The Wars After the Armistice in 1918, some British and Canadian 18-pounders, including a battery transported portee, were in the British Army of the Rhine in the Rhineland. It also served with British and Canadian forces in North Russia in 1918–1919 and with the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force. In 1919, it served with the 7th, 16th, 21st and 217th Brigades R.F.A. in the Third Afghan War, in operations in Mesopotamia 1920–21, and Waziristan 1936–37. Second World War During the Second World War, the 18-pounder was used mainly by Territorial Army regiments in the British Expeditionary Force. Some Regular units also had them, the most famous being K (Hondeghem) Battery which won its battle honour with them. A total of 216 guns were lost in the 1940 campaign. This left the British Army with 126 guns in UK and 130 in the rest of the world, according to a stocktake in July 1940. It was also used by British and other Commonwealth units in the East African campaign, and the North African campaign. During the war against Japan (from December 1941), the 18-pdr was used in the Malayan campaign (by a number of British field regiments) and, to a lesser degree, the Battle of Hong Kong (by 965 Beach Defence Battery). At the Battle of Kota Bharu (Malaya) some of the