"In eighteen seconds you should hear the shell explode," said the Lieutenant, taking his stand by the telephonist with an open notebook and pencil in his hands—"15, 16, 17, 18"—I finished counting. Boom! came the distant explosion.
A few seconds of silence.
"Plus 3," announced the telephonist, repeating an order from the distant Captain.
The Lieutenant made an entry in his notebook and simultaneously rattled off some figures like a football quarterback. The men worked over the sights and cranks, while my Commandant said to me: "That shot was too far to the right; plus 3 means five three-thousandths further to the left."
"All ready," said the Lieutenant.
"All ready," repeated the telephonist, and then:
"Tirez!" and again the twitch of the white cord, the blood-red flame, the roar, the slow, easy recoil, the diminishing wheeze, the "Coup parti," the eighteen seconds' silence, and the distant boom.
"Plus 4," sang out the telephonist, and there was a mechanical repetition of operations. "The observer corrected the first shot about ten metres to the left, and, finding that was not enough, corrected the second shot another fifteen metres to the left. They'll edge along like that till they reach the blockhouse, destroying the trench to right of it on the way. Then, when they've destroyed the blockhouse completely, if that does not take up all the day's allowance of shells, they'll expend the remainder on knocking out the trench to the left of the blockhouse. To-day's allowance for Julia is twenty shells, and probably she will use up most of them on the blockhouse to make a thorough job of it."
"Tirez!" came the telephonist's voice, and as the roar was succeeded by silence, my Commandant exclaimed to me: "Filons!" French slang for which the American equivalent is, "Let us beat it!"