If a shell from this gun were to hit at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway at the noon hour, it would probably kill and wound a hundred men.  If it went into the dug-out of a support trench it would get everybody there; but if it went ten yards beyond the trench into the open field, it would probably get nobody.  “Cover!” someone exclaimed, while we were looking at the gun; and everybody promptly got under the branches of a tree or a shed.  A German aeroplane was cruising in our direction.  If the aviator saw a group of men standing about he might draw conclusions and pass the wireless word to send in some shells at whatever number on the German gunners’ map was ours.

These gunners loved their gun; loved it for the power which it could put into a blow under their trained hands; loved it for the care and the labour it had meant for them.  It is the way of gunners to love their gun, or they would not be good gunners.  Of all the guns I saw that day, I think that two big howitzers meant the most to their masters.  These had just arrived.  They had been set up only two days.  They had not yet fired against the enemy.  For many months the gunners had drilled in England, and they had tried their “eight-inch hows” out on the target range and brought them across the Channel and nursed them along French roads, and finally set them up in their hidden lair.  Now they waited for observers to assist them in registration.

When the general approached there was a call to turn out the guard; but the general stopped that.  At the front there is an end of the ceremoniousness of the barracks.  Military formality disappears.  Discipline, as well as other things, is simpler and more real.  The men went on with their recess playing football in a near-by field.

The officers possibly were a trifle diffident and uncertain; they had not yet the veteran’s manner.  It was clear that they had done everything required by the textbook of theory—­the latest, up-to-date textbook of experience at the front as taught in England.  When they showed us how they had stored their stock of shells to be safe from a shot by the enemy, one remarked that the method was according to the latest directions, though there was some difference among military experts on the subject.  When there is a difference, what is the beginner to do?  An old hand, of course, does it his way until an order makes him do otherwise.  The general had a suggestion about the application of the method.  He had little to say, the general, and all was in the spirit of comradeship and quite to the point.  Not much escaped his observation.

It seems fairly true that one who knows his work well in any branch of human endeavour makes it appear easy.  Once a gunner always a gunner is characteristic of all armies.  The general had spent his life with guns.  He was a specialist visiting his plant; one of the staff specialists responsible to a corps commander for the work of the guns on a certain section of map, for accuracy and promptness of fire when it was required in the commander’s plans.