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Updated: May 29, 2025
Up there, on the Pimple, I had seen Normabell, the eyes of the battery. Here I was watching its ears. And, to finish the metaphor, to work it out, I was listening to its voice. Its brazen tongues were giving voice continually. The guns after all, everything else led up to them. They were the reason for all the rest of the machinery of the battery, and it was they who said the last short word.
I wondered if my shot would tell. I tried to visualize its consequences. It might strike some vital spot. It might kill some man whose life was of the utmost value to the enemy. It might it might do anything! And I knew that my shot would be watched; Normabell, sitting up there on the Pimple in his little observatory, would watch it, as he did all of that battery's shots. Would be make a report?
The way the guns kept pounding away at it made me think of firemen in a small town drenching a local blaze with their hose. The gunners were just so eager as that. And I could almost see that factory, crumbling away. Major Normabell had pointed it out to me, up on the ridge, and now I knew why.
There was no report by telephone from Normabell about that particular shot; I hung about a while, by the telephone listeners, hoping one would come. And it disappointed me that no attention was paid to that shot. "Probably simply means it went home," said Godfrey. "A shot that acts just as it should doesn't get reported." But I was disappointed, just the same.
We get all our ranges and the records of all our hits, from Normabell." I looked a question, I suppose. "You called on him, I think up on the Pimple. Major Normabell, D.S.O." That was how I learned the name of the imperturbable major with whom I had smoked a pipe on the crest of Vimy Ridge. I shall always remember his name and him.
I saw no man in France who made a livelier impression upon my mind and my imagination. "Aye," I said. "I remember. So that's his name Normabell, D.S.O. I'll make a note of that." My informant smiled. "Normabell's one of our characters," he said. "Well, you see he commands a goodish bit of country there where he sits. And when he needs them he has aircraft observations to help him, too.
I'd like to think I did real damage with my one shot, but I'm afraid my shell was just one of those that turned up a bit of dirt and made one of those small brown eruptions I had seen rising on all sides along the German lines as I had sat and smoked my pipe with Normabell earlier in the day. "Well, anyway," I said, exultingly, "that's that! I hope I got two for my one, at least!"
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