Another sound that one gets to know with experience is the report of the trench mortar. This is not distinguishable if there is much noise going on, and is best likened to the ‘clap’ of a pigeon-trap. My ear has been somewhat trained by much shikar in Ceylon jungles, and this has held me in good stead on at least one occasion, when, after blowing a mine, the Germans fired four trench mortars at a group of miners and myself in a front-line sap. I distinctly heard the ‘clap’ of the report and was able to give the warning to disperse. There was not much cover, but we had good luck and no one was hit.
A pleasant ‘drawing-room’ voice is that of our beautiful little field-howitzer. It goes off with more of a puff than a bang, and the shell sails away with a soft whirring note which is lost in the distance long before the formidable crash of the burst is wafted back from the German lines.
An alarming sound that one used to hear earlier in the war, when ammunition was of a lower quality than it is now, was that of a shell with a ‘stripped’ driving band. Such a shell will whirl through the air at any angle and will land, possibly base first, a mile or two short of its mark.
One of the most encouraging of sounds is the dull thud of a German ‘blind’ shell, especially if, as often happens, they are coming over in appreciable numbers. We are sometimes treated to furious ‘strafes’ with shells of the ‘toy-shop’ quality, of which only a small percentage detonate properly, while a somewhat larger proportion go off with an impotent pop, and the majority fail to explode at all.
‘Smoky Bill’ used to fire such shells. ‘Smoky Bill’ was a funny old thing dating back from the ’seventies. A vast column of smoke rising from behind a certain wood in the German lines was the first signal that he had fired, and this was followed by a fearsome whirr in the air, and then, five times out of six, by a dull thud and nothing more! We knew where ‘Smoky Bill’ was, but nobody ever fired at him—he was one of the side-shows of that sector and never did anyone any harm.
Now ‘Percy’ is another fellow altogether. ‘Percy’ is the long 13-centimetre high-velocity German gun. At most ranges ‘Percy’ comes quicker than sound, and there is no warning of his approach. He goes off with a mighty bang, and his shell, when you do hear it, comes along with a terrific shriek. The only encouraging thought about ‘Percy’ is that he is not very common down the line, whereas we have many guns that must give the enemy similar thrills.
In order to feel thoroughly optimistic about the war one must hear the voice of the French ‘75’ when he is really angry. I happened to be at an observation-post down in the French lines one evening when word had come down from the front line that enemy trench mortars were very active in a certain sector. Two batteries of ‘75’s’ immediately took on the offenders. One or two rounds for réglage were sent over from the première pièce of each battery, there was a slight correction for range (‘diminuez de cinquante!’), and then they literally pummelled the Hun trenches for about a minute and a half. A confused roar of ear-splitting cracks, a wild swirl of shells, and two continuous rows of black spurts shot up from the German trenches. There was one gap in the wall of bursting melinite, which gradually narrowed, and then the firing stopped. A few words down the telephone, and then, with a loud crash, two salvoes went into the remaining gap. The captain in the observation-post merely remarked ‘Bon!’ and sat down to record his targets. These short vigorous strafes must be very disconcerting to friend Hun, and although, of course, every round did not actually hit the mark, the shooting was remarkably accurate and the majority did get some part of the trench. One can imagine the effect of the last two salvoes on the previously unstrafed portion where seekers after shelter would have gathered!
On another occasion, at the beginning of one of the minor battles of the war, I was at the same post, and these two batteries were firing at a most remarkable speed, the general principle being to return anything that was sent over by the enemy with interest—a thing that the Frenchman always seems able to do unless his guns happen to be hopelessly outnumbered by some local concentration of the Germans.
Many and interesting are the various sound-phenomena of the battlefield. Why is it, for instance, that once when a certain battery was firing over my head from behind a crest the rush of the shell was heard going away in an opposite direction, so that it seemed, at first, as if the breech had blown out; and that when I approached the battery the shells sounded as if they were going straight up in the air? Why is it that, from some positions, the shells from our own batteries are heard to give forth a crackling sound instead of the usual swirl when speeding over to the enemy? This last effect may occasionally be due to a badly centred shell, but, I think, not always. One is too busy in war-time to look into these interesting details, and in peace-time one has not the opportunity!
I remember an occasion when the guns made a very effective accompaniment to a song. I was lunching below ground in an observation-post dug-out, and a very pleasant-voiced lady was singing to us from a gramophone. I forget what the song was, but the regular bang and whirr of a battery firing overhead certainly improved the effect. We shouted up to the observer to know if the shells were ‘ours’ or ‘theirs,’ and elicited the interesting information that it was the Germans who were supplying the accompaniment!