. It had risk, too; there was
no telling when a shell might lift him off the cushion and provide a
hole for the burial of his remains.

If he were shelled, the observer would go to a funk-pit, as the
gunners do, until the storm had passed; and then he would move on
with his cushion and his telegraph instrument and make a hole in
another wall, if he did not find a tree or some other eminence which
suited his purpose better. Meanwhile, he was not the only observer in
that section. There were others nearer the trenches, perhaps actually
in the trenches. The two armies, seeming chained to their trenches,
are set with veiled eyes at the end of wires; veiled eyes trying to
locate the other's eyes, the other's guns and troops and the least
movement which indicates any attempt to gain an advantage.

"Gunnery is navigation, dead reckoning, with the spotting observer
the sun by which you correct your figures," said one of the artillery
officers.

Firing enough one had seen--landscape bathed in smoke and dust
and reverberating with explosions; but all as a spectacle from an
orchestra seat, not too close at hand for comfort. This time I was to
see the guns fire and the results of the firing in detail. Both can rarely
be seen at the same time. It was not show firing this that we watched
from an observing station, but part of the day's work for the guns and
the general. First, the map, "Here and there," as an officer's finger
pointed; and then one looked across fields, green and brown and
golden with the summer crops.

Item I. The Germans were fortifying a certain point on a certain farm.
We were going to put some "heavy stuff" in there and some "light
stuff," too. The burst of our shells could be located in relation to a
certain tree.

Item II. Our planes thought that the Germans had a wireless station in
a certain building. "Heavy stuff" exclusively for this. No enemy's
wireless station ought to be enjoying serene summer weather without
interruption; and no German working-party ought to be allowed to
build redoubts within range of our guns without a break in the
monotony of their drudgery.

Six lyddites were the order for the wireless station; six high explosives
which burst on contact and make a hole in the earth large enough for
a grave for the Kaiser and all his field marshals. Frequently, not only
the number of shells to be fired, but also the intervals between them
is given by the artillery commander, as part of his pl