"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 firing."
"No matter--they're off their onions to go out under such shelling."
"Gunners, my boy," says a man of another company who was strolling
in the trench, "are either quite good or quite bad. Either they're
trumps or they're trash. I tell you--"
"That's true of all privates, what you're saying."
"Possibly; but I'm not talking to you about all privates; I'm
talking to you about gunners, and I tell you too that--"
"Hey, my lads! Better find a hole to dump yourselves in, before you
get one on the snitch!"
The strolling stranger carried his story away, and Cocon, who was in
a perverse mood, declared: "We can be doing our hair in the dug-out,
seeing it's rather boring outside."
"Look, they're sending torpedoes over there!" said Paradis,
pointing. Torpedoes go straight up, or very nearly so, like larks,
fluttering and rustling; then they stop, hesitate, and come straight
down again, heralding their fall in its last seconds by a "baby-cry"
that we know well.
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