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Updated: June 15, 2025
The gunners would range their guns before dark, so as to give the rebels a good one when the time should arrive. Every device was resorted to that would make this night-firing effective and annoying to the enemy. Not long after the siege began, and while we were yet at this point of the line, we got a mortar-battery two guns into position.
Later on, such means will be of utility to them in the night-firing of long-range rifled guns, as well as for preventing surprises, and also for illuminating the breach and the ditches at the time of an assault, and the entire field of battle at the time of a sortie. On a campaign it will prove none the less useful to be provided with movable apparatus that follow the army. A few years ago. Lieut.
The colonel didn't want to leave our farm, but two nights at the waggon lines would mean respite from night-firing for the gunners; so he had asked the battery commanders to choose between moving out for the two days and remaining in the line. They had decided to stay. It turned to rain on October 29th.
He wanted the loan of my torch for a brief study of the shell-holes, as he intended establishing the battery waggon lines in the vicinity. The Boche had started his night-firing in earnest by the time the mess cart and party passed the cross-roads at Guillemont. A pungent smell of gas led to much coughing and sneezing.
We manage a kind of glee Clementina, The Long, Long Trail, Three Blind Mice, Long, Long Ago, Rock of Ages. Hymns are quite favourites. Don't worry about me; your prayers weave round me a mantle of defence. Yours with more love than I can write, October 31st, 1916. Hallowe'en. Dearest People: Once more I'm taking the night-firing and so have a chance to write to you.
Already some of our men were patching leaky, shrapnel-flicked roofs with biscuit-tins and strong strips of waterproof sheeting. We passed through A Battery's garden at nine o'clock. "We won't disturb them," said the colonel. "Bullivant is a morning sleeper, and is certain not to be up after the night-firing."
The colonel had issued a night-firing programme just as if we were in settled positions, and with fresh ammunition arriving from the original waggon lines the batteries began "pooping off" with brisk enthusiasm, their object being, of course, to cover the retirement of our infantry. Every one of us had turned out that morning immediately the Hun bombardment started.
Midnight: I had sent out the night-firing orders to our four batteries, checked watches over the telephone, and put in a twenty minutes' wrestle with the brain-racking Army Form B. 213. The doctor and signalling officer had slipped away to bed, and the colonel was writing his nightly letter home. I smoked a final cigarette and turned in at 12.30 A.M.
Their night-firing would slacken almost to cessation for many minutes together.
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