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Young Eames, the officer passing the orders to the gunners, stood very upright, close to the battery telephonist, and let his voice ring out in crisp staccato tones that would have won him full marks at Larkhill or Shoeburyness: "Aiming point top of tower.
"Yes," nodded the Major, "strange thing is that a year ago they weren't, you know guns weren't in existence and the men weren't gunners clerks an' all that sort of thing, you know civilians, what?" "They're pretty good gunners now judging by effect!" said I, nodding towards the abomination of desolation that had once been a village.
As the evening wears on, the salvos become more frequent. All through the night they go on. The next morning the intervals are becoming even less. Occasionally the hurricane reaches such an intensity that there seems no interval at all. There is an easing in the afternoon which may indicate that the worst is over, or merely that the guns are being cleaned, or the gunners having their tea.
By this method it sounds like one gun firing and gives the Germans the impression that the gun is firing from a point midway between the guns which are actually firing, and they accordingly shell that particular spot. The machine gunners chuckle and say, "Fritz is a brainy boy, not 'alf he ain't."
A careful examination showed that a rifle-ball as well as a charge of shot had struck the Pigeon. The gunners had fired on the same bird. Both enjoyed the joke, though it had its serious side, for food as well as ammunition was scarce in that backwoods home.
In the fork of a tree I found a Testament, with the words, 'Charles Durrale, Corporal of Company G, written on the fly-leaf. The guns and the gunners, have disappeared. Some of the latter are now with the column moving in pursuit of the enemy, others are suffering in the hospitals, and still others are resting where the bugle's reveille shall never wake them.
The soldiers crouched behind trees and logs and hillocks, lying on their faces, picking off the Rebel gunners when they attempted to load their cannon. But the day passed and the fort was not taken.
Some of the pieces had been loaded four years before and were dismounted at the first firing. One of them burst on the sixth or seventh day, killing the gunners and severely wounding the governor, who personally superintended the defense.
And this was the most gruesome as he now thought of his subordinates and fellow-officers, he saw them all going about exactly like poor Meltzar, without heads on their bodies. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the looks of his gunners in vain! Not a single face rose before his mind's eye.
Hearing it die away, the gunners also stopped, reloaded, and laid their pieces, waited the reports of their Forward Officers, and on receiving them turned into their dug-outs and their blankets again. But the batteries covering the front held by the Asterisks remained by their guns and continued to throw occasional rounds into the German trenches.
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