And again and again—right on!
The ugly, spreading, low-hanging, dense cloud was renewed from its heart by successive bursts in the same place. If the aeroplane’s conclusions were right, that wireless station must be very much wireless, now. The only safe discount for the life insurance of the operators was one hundred per cent.
“Here, they are firing more than six!” said the general. “It’s always hard to hold gunners down when they are on the target like that.”
He spoke as if it would have been difficult for him to resist the temptation himself. The Germans got two extra for full measure. Perhaps those two were waste; perhaps the first two had been enough. Conservation of shells has become a first principle of the artillerists’ duty. The number fired by either side in the course of the routine of an average so-called peaceful day is surprising. Economy would be easier if it were harder to slip a shell into a gun-breech. The men in the trenches are always calling for shells. They want a tree or a house which is the hiding-place of a sniper knocked down. The men at the guns would be glad to accommodate them, but the say as to that is with commanders who know the situation.
“The Boches will be coming back at us soon, you will see!” said one of the officers at our observation post. “They always do. The other day they chose this particular spot for their target”—which was a good reason why they would not this time, an optimist thought.
Let either side start a bombardment and the other responds. There is a you-hit-me-and-I’ll-hit-you character to siege warfare. Gun-fire provokes gun-fire. Neither adversary stays quiet under a blow. It was not long before we heard the whish of German shells passing some distance away.
They say the sport is out of war. Perhaps, but not its enthralling and horrible fascination. Knowing what the target is, knowing the object of the fire, hearing the scream of the projectile on the way and watching to see if it is to be a hit, when the British are fighting the Germans on the soil of France, has an intensive thrill which is missing to the spectator who looks on at the Home Sports’ Club shooting at clay pigeons—which is not in justification of war. It does explain, however, the attraction of gunnery to gunners. One forgets for the instant that men are being killed and mangled. He thinks only of points being scored in a contest which requires all the wit and strength and fortitude of man and all his cunning in the manufacture and control of material.
You want your side to win; in this case, because it is the side of humanity and of that quiet, kindly general and the things that he and the army he represents stand for. The blows which the demons from the British lairs strike are to you the blows of justice; and you are glad when they go home. They are your blows. You have a better reason for keeping an army’s artillery secrets than for keeping secret the signals of your Varsity football team, which any one instinctly keeps—the reason of a world cause.
Yet another thing to see—an aeroplane assisting a battery by spotting the fall of its shells, which is engrossing, too, and amazingly simple. Of course, this battery was proud of its method of concealment. Each battery commander will tell you that one of the British planes has flown very low, as a test, without being able to locate his battery. If the plane does locate it, there is more work due in “make-up” to complete the disguise. Competition among batteries is as keen as among battleships of the North Atlantic.
Situation favoured this battery, which was Canadian. It was as nicely at home as a first-class Adirondack camp. At any rate, no other battery had a dugout for a litter of eight pups, with clean straw for their bed, right between two gun-emplacements.