Canada, Australasia, South Africa—­they never reckoned upon having to cope with them.  These were separate nations, they thought, independent in fact if not in name, which would seize the occasion to separate themselves entirely from the mother country.  In South Africa they were sure that there would be smoldering discontent enough left from the days of the Boer war to break out into a new flame of war and rebellion at this great chance.

And so it drove them mad with fury when they learned that Canada and all the rest had gone in, heart and soul.  And when even their poison gas could not make the Canadians yield; when, later still, they learned that the Canadians were their match, and more than their match, in every phase of the great game of war, their rage led them to excesses against the men from overseas even more damnable than those that were their general practice.

These Canadians, who were now my hosts, had located their guns in a pit triangular in shape.  The guns were mounted at the corners of the triangle, and along its sides.  And constantly, while I was there they coughed their short, sharp coughs and sent a spume of metal flying toward the German lines.  Never have I seen a busier spot.  And, remember—­until I had almost fallen into that pit, with its sputtering, busy guns, I had not been able to make even a good guess as to where they were!  The very presence of this workshop of death was hidden from all save those who had a right to know of it.

It was a masterly piece of camouflage.  I wish I could explain to you how the effect was achieved.  It was all made plain to me; every step of the process was explained, and I cried out in wonder and in admiration at the clever simplicity of it.  But that is one of the things I may not tell.  I saw many things, during my time at the front, that the Germans would give a pretty penny to know.  But none of the secrets that I learned would be more valuable, even to-day, than that of that hidden battery.  And so—­I must leave you in ignorance as to that.

The commanding officer was most kindly and patient in explaining matters to me.

“We can’t see hide nor hair of our targets here, of course,” he said, “any more than Fritz can see us.  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.  He’s our pair of eyes.  We’re like moles down here, we gunners—­but he does all our seeing for us.  And he’s in constant communication—­he or one of his officers.”