u haven't hardly the time to flatten
yourself. I once got the gunners to tell me all about them."

"I tell you, the shells from the naval guns, you haven't the time to
hear 'em. Got to pack yourself up before they come."

"And there's that new shell, a dirty devil, that breaks wind after it's
dodged into the earth and out of it again two or three times in the
space of six yards. When I know there's one of them about, I want to go
round the corner. I remember one time--"

"That's all nothing, my lads," said the new sergeant, stopping on his
way past, "you ought to see what they chucked us at Verdun, where I've
come from. Nothing but whoppers, 380's and 420's and 244's. When you've
been shelled down there you know all about it--the woods are sliced
down like cornfields, the dug-outs marked and burst in even when
they've three thicknesses of beams, all the road-crossings sprinkled,
the roads blown into the air and changed into long heaps of smashed
convoys and wrecked guns, corpses twisted together as though shoveled
up. You could see thirty chaps laid out by one shot at the cross-roads;
you could see fellows whirling around as they went up, always about
fifteen yards, and bits of trousers caught and stuck on the tops of the
trees that were left. You could see one of these 380's go into a house
at Verdun by the roof, bore through two or three floors, and burst at
the bottom, and all the damn lot's got to go aloft; and in the fields
whole battalions would scatter and lie flat under the shower like poor
little defenseless rabbits. At every step on the ground in the fields
you'd got lumps as thick as your arm and as wide as that, and it'd take
four poilus to lift the lump of iron. The fields looked as if they were
full of rocks. And that went on without a halt for months on end,
months on end!" the sergeant repeated as he passed on, no doubt to tell
again the story of his souvenirs somewhere else.

"Look, look, corporal, those chaps over there--are they soft in the
head?" On the bombarded position we saw dots of human beings emerge
hurriedly and run towards the explosions.

"They're gunners," said Bertrand; "as soon as a shell's burst they
sprint and rummage for the fuse is the hole, for the position of the
fuse gives the direction of its battery, you see, by the way it's dug
itself in; and as for the distance, you've only got to read it--it's
shown on the range-figures cut on the time-fuse which is set just
before firin