I bent my head and stepped inside. The gun-pit (which was not really a pit since its floor was on ground level) was lit only by the narrow doorway at the rear and by what light could filter through the hurdles placed in front of the embrasure. But in the dimness I could just make out the rows and rows of shells all neatly laid in recesses in the walls, the iron girders that spanned the roof and held up its weight of sandbags, brick rubble and—reinforced concrete. Ye gods! concrete—for a field gun! And there, spotlessly clean, ready for instant action, was the gun itself. I felt sorry for it—it seemed so hopelessly out of place, so far removed from its legitimate sphere. To think that an eighteen-pounder, designed for transit along roads and across country, should have come to this!
"The detachment live here," said the Child, and showed me a commodious dug-out connected with the gun-pit by a short tunnel. Inside this dug-out were four bunks and a stove—also a gunner devouring what smelt like a very savoury dinner.
"What will these keep out?" I asked.
"Oh!" replied the Child, airily, "they're 'pip-squeak'[3] and splinter-proof, of course, and they might stop a four-two or even a five-nine. But a direct hit with an eight-inch would make some hole, I expect. Come and see the telephonist's place. It's rather a show spot."
[3] German field gun shells.
As we were walking towards it a stentorian voice shouted, "Battery action."
Instantly, the few men who had been working on the drains and on the pits, or filling sandbags, dropped their tools and raced to the gun-pits. In a few seconds the battery was ready to fire.
We entered the telephone room—a shell-proof cave really. A man sat at a little table with an improvised but extraordinarily ingenious telephone exchange in front of him and a receiver strapped to his ear. A network of wires went out through the wall above his head. His instrument emitted a constant buzzing of "dots" and "dashes," all of which he disregarded, waiting for his own call. Suddenly he clicked his key in answer, then said—
"Hullo, oh-pip[4]—yes. Target K.—one round battery fire—yes."
[4] "Oh-pip" is signalese for O.P. = Observation Post.