The Washington herald., 1918-01-27

ABOVE the DIN or the guns. The over
strained howitzer had torn away from
the platform to which it was bolted,
drawing the base-plate right through
two tiers of oaken beams. Fortu-
nately, the piece itself was undamag-
ed, and everyone who could be SPAR
ed, officer and men. fell upon drag
ropes and hauled it out OF the pit
onto a hard road near by, from
which it could be fired. 1t was right
out in the open now, but that was
unavoidable. The maintenance Of fire
was of far greater Importance than
any attempt at concealment. A few
minutes Of frantic hauling. and the
gun was adding its voice once more
to the inferno of sound that threat
ened to break in the ear-drums of
its detachment.
Gas and spIinters.
1t was a picture of forgotten war;
the gun on the open road, the men
kneeIing around it as the lanyard was
pulled. Then the flash and roar; the
long run back with trail pounding
the hard surface, the men rushing
in to hand it up to its old positions.
The air was full of gas and splinters.
Now and then a man hastily bound
n handkerchief around a limb, the
blood that oozed through it blending
with the buffer-oil that the guns leak
ed out, to form a dark brown stain
that soon spread over everything.
But nobody was very seriously hurt,
and In the excitement of maintain
ing fire nobody had time to pay at
tention to the slight wound sustained.
The attack was repulsed before ever
the assaulting infantry reached the
English trenches. They were mown
down by machine-gun and artillery
hre. A group Of French Seventy
fives" did fearful execution among a
body of Germans that debouched from
a wood in close order, and the dead
in this particular sector alone were
subsequently counted in thousands.
The fire on both sides slackened
down; the battery halved its rate of
hre; then came down to a couple OF
rounds a minute, and, finally, stopped
altogether. The guns were overhauled
and such ammunition as was left put
back in the shell and cartridge stores.
BY evening everything was quiet.
The wheeler and a few men from No.
detachment found a ruined school
whose rafters were exactly the size
OF the torn planks of the broken plat
form. By next morning, the battery
wore its normal appearance, and life
was proceeding in the village in the
same routine as it had known before.
There were a few shell holes to be
avoided. and a most unpleasant faint
smell of gas that lasted until a down.
pour of rain few days later washed
it away.
That is the story of typical coun-
ter-attack, unsuccessful, as most Ger
man attacks are these days. These
supermen who work the guns under
such conditions, what sort of chaps
are they, who and what were they be-
fore the war. and how do they get
their engines of destruction, that look
as though only travelling cranes could
move them, into such exposed battle
positions? These are questions that
every civilian asks himself at the
front. Let me try to answer them.
Back In BIighty.
The scene changes back to England.
For England, read America, and the
reader can forsee the development
OF the awkard gun squads he watches
drilling, perhaps with some misgiv-
ings, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The men. Brown, Smith and Robin
son. city men and country men,
clerks and farm hands, factory work.
ers and sons OF the rich, have been
transferred for artillery duty after a
few most unpleasant weeks of infan-
try drill as raw recruits.
Slowly they develop from rather
woe-begone citizens, strangely clad in
lln1fnrrn0 20
whom the khaki sits naturally, sol
diers with a visible pride in their new
work. And their appearance is the
outward and visible sign, Of the
change that has come to their minds.
They are gunners now. no longer
mere ciphers of no interest to any but
themselves. They have become, in a
Few weeks, a battery, a corporate
body, a unit worth living for, and
perhaps. its members already feel in
some vague way, worth dying for.
Their guns-the Kings final argu-
ment, as the Hun engraves upon his
pieces-are the arbiters whose COM
pethng voices shall be heard in the
Gays that presage victory. To this
great extent has the idea grown
through the days OF their training,
soon the scene changes across tho
channel again to French village,
whose narrow streets have long ago
been churned into rivers Of mud with
its unpretentious houses placarded
with boards showing how many men
can be bilieted in there. The little
square before the church is filed with
motor-iorries and tractors. Four
great guns covered with tarpauiins
nearly mn the width of the main
street. In the corner is fire built
between few bricks, and by II sits
Robinson, the bank clerk. Brown, the
country grocer. and Smith. the great
merchants son, eating bully beef with
their clasp-knives out of the same tin.
and exchanging jests as to what they
VIII % when they get into action at