It is the inability of gun to see gun, and even when seen to knock out gun, which has put an end to the so-called artillery duel of pitched-battle days, when cannon walloped cannon to keep cannon from walloping the infantry. Now when there is an action, though guns still go after guns if they know where they are, most of the firing is done against trenches and to support trenches and infantry works, or with a view to demoralising the infantry. Concentration of artillery fire will demolish an enemy’s trench and let your infantry take possession of the wreckage remaining; but then the enemy’s artillery concentrates on your infantry and frequently makes their new habitation untenable.
Noiselessly except for a little click, with chickens clucking in a field near by, the big breech-block which held the shell fast, sending all the power of the explosion out of the muzzle, was swung back and one looked through the shining tube of steel, with its rifling which caught the driving band and gave the shell its rotation and accuracy in its long journey, which would close when, descending at the end of its parabola, its nose struck brick or earth or pavement and it exploded.
Wheels that lift and depress and swing the muzzle, and gadgets with figures on them, and other scales which play between the map and the gadgets, and atmospheric pressure and wind variation, all worked out with the same precision under a French hedge as on board a battleship where the gun-mounting is fast to massive ribs of steel—it seemed a matter of bookkeeping and trigonometry rather than war.
If a shell from this gun were to hit at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway at the noon hour, it would probably kill and wound a hundred men. If it went into the dugout of a support trench it would get everybody there; but if it went ten yards beyond the trench into the open field it would probably get nobody.
“Cover!” some one exclaimed, while we were looking at the gun; and everybody promptly got under the branches of a tree or a shed. A German aeroplane was cruising in our direction. If the aviator saw a group of men standing about, he might draw conclusions and pass the wireless word to send in some shells at whatever number on the German gunners’ map was ours.
These gunners loved their gun; loved it for the power which it could put into a blow under their trained hands; loved it for the care and the labour it had meant for them. It is the way of gunners to love their gun, or they would not be good gunners. Of all the guns I saw that day, I think that two big howitzers meant the most to their masters. These had just arrived. They had been set up only two days. They had not yet fired against the enemy. For many months the gunners had drilled in England, and had tried their “eight-inch hows” out on the target range, and brought them across the Channel, and nursed them along the French roads, and finally set them up in their hidden lair. Now they waited for observers to assist them in registration.
When the general approached there was a call to turn out the guard; but he stopped that. At the front there is an end of the ceremoniousness of the barracks. Military formality disappears. Discipline, as well as other things, is simpler and more real. The men went on with their recess, playing football in a nearby field.
The officers possibly were a trifle diffident and uncertain; they had not yet the veterans’ manner. It was clear that they had done everything required by the text-book of theory—the latest, up-to-date text-book of experience at the front as taught in England. When they showed us how they had stored their stock of shells to be safe from a shot by the enemy, one remarked that the method was according to the latest directions, though there was some difference among military experts on the subject. When there is a difference, what is the beginner to do? An old hand, of course, does it his way until an order makes him do otherwise.
The general had a suggestion about the application of the method. He had little to say, the general, and it all was in the spirit of comradeship and much to the point. Few things escaped his observation. It seems fairly true that one who knows any branch of human endeavour well makes his work appear easy. Once a gunner always a gunner is characteristic of all armies. The general had spent his life with guns. He was a specialist visiting his plant; one of the staff specialists responsible to a corps commander for the work of the guns on a certain section of map, for accuracy and promptness of fire when it was needed in the commander’s plans.
If the newcomers put their shells into the target on their first trial they had qualified; and sometimes new-comers shoot quite as well as veterans, which is a surprise to both and the best kind of news for the general who is in charge of an expanding plant. New guns are just beginning to come; England is only beginning to make war. It takes time to make a gun and time to train men to fire it. The war will be won by gunners and infantry that knew nothing of guns or drill when the war began.