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.

If the newcomers put their shells into the target on their first tri