Gunroom

“ Half a dozen men of the signal staff are lying about the floor looking at week-old papers. In the next room I can hear the general, seated at a table and intent on his map, talking to an officer that has just come from the firing line. Outside the window a gun is making a fiendish row, shaking the whole house. Occasionaly there is a bit of a rattle—that's shrapnel bullets falling on the tiles of an outhouse. ”

“ Even the trapping of war, the fighting machine itself, wears a holiday or—at most—an Easter-peace-manoeuvre appearance. A heavy battery has its guns so carefully concealed, so bowered in green, that it is only the presence of the lounging gunners and close, searching looks that reveal a few inches of muzzle peering out towards the hill crest in front. Scattered about behind the guns, covered with beautiful green turf, shadowed by growing trees, are the dwelling-places of the gunners, deep 'dug-outs,' with no visible sign of their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. ”

“ But through the doorway it lights a picture eloquent of war. This picture, framed by the sandbags of the doorway, includes a gun-limber, observation pole, rifles, a telescope, and a telephone, along a shell-pierced wall. Above winding mounds of black soil from entrenchments hang the feathery fronds of the eternal palm. Only some droop, for mostly they hang, bullet-clipped, like broken limbs. The night is still and cold, the stillness punctuated by the rackety music of machine-guns. As I write snipers' bullets crack loudly on the mutti wall behind my head. ”

“ It was nothing to them that every now and again the house above them shook and quivered to the shock of a heavy shell exploding somewhere on the ground round the house, that the rattle of rifle fire dwindled away at times to separate and scattered shots, brisked up again and rose to a long roll, the devil's tattoo of the machine guns rattling through it with exactly the sound a boy makes running a stick rapidly along a railing. ”

“ The number of duels each gun was in was carefully counted, every scar got in battle was treasured, and the men around their camp-fires, at their scanty messes, or on the march, bragged of them among themselves and avouched them as witnesses. New recruits coming in to fill the gaps made by the killed and disabled, readily fell in with the common mood and caught the spirit like a contagion. It was not an uncommon thing for a wheel to be smashed in by a shell, but if it happened to one gun oftener than to another there was envy. ”

“ I had kicked another rifle, but hadn't the pluck to go back and fetch it.
I just held on, trembling all over, and waited and listened, and then started again, following the door round till I got to the wall, and there, the first thing I felt, was a box on the ledge, right in the corner between the door and the wall. I felt it all over; it had a square hole in the top, and my hand went in and—oh! it was such a jolly feeling—it was nearly full of paper packets of ammunition. ”

“ The fifteen hundred men seem to be all shouting at once, and the din which comes up through the hatchways is fearful. This noisy mass of humanity is practically imprisoned below, for there is a heavy iron grating securely padlocked over each exit, and a European, "armed to the teeth," stands by each, ready to shoot the first man who attempts to force it. In this saloon there is a stand of six rifles with bayonets, and four revolvers, and, as we started, a man carefully took the sheaths off the bayonets, and loaded the firearms with ball cartridge. ”

“ And then, from over to the left, startlingly sudden to every one of those hardy young Americans, had come the sound of firing, the crack and crackle of firearms, followed presently by the tearing, resonant fusillading of a machine-gun that, at a distance, reminds one of the rapid rolling of a barrel down hill over stony ground. ”

“ The old Colonel having completed his arrangements sat down by his camp-fire with paper and pencil, and began to write; and as the men finished their work they gathered about in groups, at first around their camp-fires, but shortly strolled over to where the guns still stood at the breastwork, black and vague in the darkness. Soon they were all assembled about the guns. One after another they visited, closing around it and handling it from muzzle to trail as a man might a horse to try its sinew and bone, or a child to feel its fineness and warmth. ”

“ Sometimes a tremendous affair, heavies, field guns and trench mortars all pounding away together, creeping barrage, smoke screens and the rest of it. Elsewhere and at other times, nothing, Infantry well ahead of the guns, going forward almost into the blue, with nothing heavier than machine guns to support them. ”

“ The guns are watching for the targets at all hours—the ever-hungry, ever-ready, murderous, cunning, quick, scientifically-calculating, marvellously-accurate and also the guessing, wondering, blind, groping, helpless guns, which toss their steel messengers over streams, woodlands, and towns, searching for unseen prey in a wide landscape.
Accurate and murderous they seem when you drop low behind a trench wall or huddle in a dug-out as you hear an approaching scream and the earth trembles and the air is wracked by a concussion, and the cry of a man a few yards away tells of a hit. ”

“ To make certain of clearness about fundamentals familiar to those at the front but to the general public only a symbol for something not understood, a curtain of fire is a swath of fragments and bullets from bursting projectiles which may stop a charge or prevent reserves from coming to the support of the front line. It is a barrier of death, the third rail of the battlefield. From the sky shrapnel descend with their showers of bullets, while the high explosives heave up the earth under foot. ”

“ They can remember the joy they had in the heartening roar of our guns as they prepared the attack, the multitudinous clamour of the field guns, the sharp scream of the 12-inch guns which reared their monstrous throats by street corners of Albert, the deep note, as of a giant’s cough, of the 15-inch howitzers, pushing out shells as big almost as mines. ”

“ I took off my coat and as she fell against me in the dark I flung it over her head, and carried her to the divan in the secret room. Then I went about my other business, for I had much to do. I cleaned my gun, and recharged it, removing the bullet from the cartridge I intended to fire later. ”

“ The rifle sends one pellet of death, the shot-gun sends a dozen leaden messengers, each shrieking for a life.
Three men on the towers fired almost simultaneously from the shot-guns, whose scattering fire raked and tore through the bushes. ”

“ April 1.—I go walking near barracks; see man looking quietly at building. Suddenly fires the sentry with his long distance rifle, so that the straight onward through the harmless onlooker's heart and through my never sufficiently to be regretted right arm passing bullet in the remote distance a child kills. ”

“ Next were stacked boxes of machine-gun ammunition, hundreds and hundreds of them, occasionally interspersed with stray boxes of rockets, signal flares, Very lights and huge piles of rifles, of machine-guns and of empty brass shells of various sizes. The value of an average German city lay spread along that road all worthless to the former owners -all constructed for the purpose of killing their fellow men! ”

“ On the other hand, if one could turn a rifle into a portable howitzer and drop a bullet with any sort of rough general accuracy within a given area, then it seemed to me that life would hardly be possible within that area. If, for example, the position was 20,000 square yards in size, and 20,000 rifles were dropping bullets upon it, each square yard would sooner or later be searched and your mark would be a whole prostrate or crouching body. What I was really evolving, though I could not know it, was the machine gun barrage of dropping or vertical fire as practised in the Great War. ”

“ At that time I was a corporal and had twelve men, with two guns at this place, yet, although nearly every one (p. 065) was hit by pieces of brick and mud and covered with dust, not a man was hurt nor a gun injured.
Canadians with Machine Gun Taking Up New Positions.
One morning, just after daylight and during a fog, I was up in an old hay-loft where we had a gun, when I heard a cock pheasant "squawking" (that's the only word that describes it) , out in front. Looking from the gun position I saw him, standing on the parapet of an abandoned French trench across the road. ”

“ Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting shrapnel, each shell scattering its four hundred odd leaden bullets far and wide, killing or wounding any unfortunate man who happened to be in the way. ”

“ Armament.—The guns for arming the place should be placed in position or in store within the works before the beginning of hostilities. There should be mounted in commanding positions a sufficient number of high-power guns to hold the enemy’s first works at a distance and to fire upon his camps, etc., if placed too near. In addition to these, a full supply of light guns, including machine and rapid-fire guns, should be at all times equipped and supplied for immediate use in meeting an assault or surprise. ”

“ The rising sound of the reports told plainly of the swinging muzzle, and officers and men dropped flat in the mud and waited till the sweeping bullets had passed over their heads. Men may work on and 'chance it' against rifle fire alone, but the sweep of a machine-gun is beyond chance, and very near to the certainty of sudden death to all in the circle of its swing. ”

“ It has a regular trace, bastion and curtain, with a dry ditch and drawbridge, well-made casemates and bomb-proofs, and a tolerable armament of columbiads, forty-two and thirty-two pounders, a few ten-inch mortars, and light guns in the external works at the salients. The store of ammunition seems ample. Some of the fuses are antiquated, and the gun-carriages are old-fashioned. The open parade and the unprotected gorges of the casemates would render the work extremely unpleasant under a shell fire, and the buildings and barracks inside are at present open to the influences of heat. ”

“ The earth is honeycombed with cellars and tunnels where the men hid themselves from our shot and shells. Along the bluff facing the river are several savage-looking guns, made of logs, smoothed off and painted so as to look exactly like cannon. The real guns were all needed for use against the besieging army. We are looking for a good night's sleep to-night. The guns that have made our nights so miserable are all under guard. ”

“ With each of the four guns firing at the rate of eight hundred shots a minute, the bullets formed a canopy over the heads of the men at the foot of the hill. A Gatling gun in action is a sight to remember; so thick and fast do the bullets fly that one can actually see the stream of lead leaving the gun and, as if handling a hose, train it on any desired point. ”

“ The positions for machine-gun mountings in a fort must depend on the size and construction of the work, the nature of the outer defences, and particularly on the supporting works in the immediate vicinity. Positions commanding the glacis and the entanglements, on salients of works and enfilading ditches, and any dead ground where the enemy may effect a lodgment, are suitable. Counterscarp galleries at the angles of works flanking the ditch should invariably have machine-gun positions, with a special loophole, long and shallow, to enable them to sweep a wide area with fire. ”

“ He looked, too, at the one gun, scarred and dented and pitted and pocked with splinter marks and bullet holes, at each little pile of breech-blocks and sights and fittings that lay spread out on handkerchiefs and haversacks and rags in the place of the other guns; and he noticed that dirty and dusty and dishevelled as the men might be, the gun parts were speckless and dustless, clean and shining with oil. ”

“ It is indeed difficult to conceive that any one should expect half-a-dozen expert gunners, each shut up in an iron box with a gun, to stop the rush of a thousand men, even by day. But imagine the feelings of the gunner on the night of a big attack, alone in his box, his nerves already strained by a preliminary bombardment and nights of watching. ”

“ As the Americans landed, some few dashing on and into a wide shelter or dugout lined with berths and concrete-floored, in which fifty men reposed or waited for night duty, the short, sharp, rapidly repeated bark of the ready pistols sounded almost like, though less regular than, a machine gun. ”

“ Riding along the roads at the front, one may know that there is a battery a stone’s throw away only when a blast from a hidden gun-muzzle warns him of its presence. It was wonderful to me that the artillery general who took me gun-seeing knew where his own guns were, let alone the enemy’s. ”

“ I've got you now, you rascals;" and I saw the muzzle of a gun appear. "Stay where you are if you value your lives! A dozen spring guns are concealed just there, and a single step may discharge them all." ”

“ Just before nightfall, while all three were at work, a rifle was discharged, and the bullet was imbedded in the tough oaken handle of the spade with which the trapper was digging.
'Whar in thunder did that come from?' he demanded, dropping the implement, catching up the rifle, and glaring savagely about him. ”