H and I Batteries, having obtained the desired information from their observers as to the range and timing of their twelve shells, waited patiently until half past two o'clock.
At that hour, 400 shells were fired into Lizerne. For the first five minutes each battery fired four rounds per minute, then came a two-minute interval. For the next five minutes every one of the twelve guns in the two batteries fired five shots per minute. A second lull of two minutes was followed by still more rapid fire for another five minutes, six rounds per sixty seconds blazing forth from each of the dozen field-pieces, seventy-two shells per minute falling in the village. Thus they continued, the spasm of firing and the brief interval of stillness alternating, until the 400 shells had been fired.
That the work of the Horse Artillery was well done was apparent from the result. Its efficiency was confirmed later by captured Germans wounded in Lizerne, who termed the place "Hell itself" while the initial bombardment was in progress.
But the work of the guns was by no means ended. The salvo died down at the appointed time. The French Colonial Zouaves rushed forward, bayonets in hand, with wild cries, and then the gunners were set to their task.
They fired another 400 rounds at the road from Steenstraate to Lizerne, a second road leading to Lizerne from the south-east, and a third road connecting the two. These three roads were the avenues most likely to be utilized by the Huns for bringing up reinforcements to meet the attack. "Searching" the roads and a couple of special points, one just back of a rise of ground, where it seemed possible reinforcements might be gathered, kept the gunners hard at work.
Shrapnel rained over such spots, bursting from twenty to thirty feet above ground, and spreading death all about.
Watching the two batteries in action gave me a high opinion of their abilities. Nothing in modern warfare was so fascinating a study as that of guns in action.
France, with her faith pinned to low trajectory and high muzzle velocity as exemplified in her wonderful "75's," and Germany's gun-religion, centring on weight of shell, made a formidable contrast.
The making of a field-piece was ever a compromise between those two schools—a gun firing a light shell straight and fast, or a gun in which speed and direct line were sacrificed to gain weight of projectile.