guns had been multiplying at a great rate
the "heavies" had been coming out, too, and giving a deeper and more
sonorous tone to that swelling chorus which rolled over the battlefields
by day and night.

There was a larger supply of shells for all those pieces, and no longer
the same need for thrift when there was urgent need for artillery
support. Retaliation was the order of the day, and if the enemy asked
for trouble by any special show of "hate" he got it quickly and with a
double dose.

Compared with the infantry, the gunners had a chance of life, except
in places where, as in the salient, the German observers stared down
at them from high ground and saw every gun flash and registered every
battery. Going round the salient one day with General Burstall--and a
very good name, too!--who was then the Canadian gunner-general, I was
horrified at the way in which the enemy had the accurate range of our
guns and gun-pits and knocked them out with deadly shooting.

Here and there our amateur gunners--quick to learn their job--found a
good place, and were able to camouflage their position for a time, and
give praise to the little god of Luck, until one day sooner or later
they were discovered and a quick move was necessary if they were not
caught too soon.

So it was with a battery in the open fields beyond Kemmel village, where
I went to see a boy who had once been a rising hope of Fleet Street.

He was new to his work and liked the adventure of it--that was before
his men were blown to bits around him and he was sent down as a tragic
case of shell-shock--and as we walked through the village of Kemmel he
chatted cheerfully about his work and life and found it topping. His
bright, luminous eyes were undimmed by the scene around him. He walked
in a jaunty, boyish way through that ruined place. It was not a pleasant
place. Kemmel village, even in those days, had been blown to bits,
except where, on the outskirts, the chateau with its racing-stables
remained untouched--"German spies!" said the boy--and where a little
grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes was also unscathed. The church was
battered and broken, and there were enormous shell-pits in the
churchyard and open vaults where old dead had been tumbled out of their
tombs. We walked along a sunken road and then to a barn in open fields.
The roof was pierced by shrapnel bullets, which let in the rain on wet
days and nights, but it was cozy otherwise in the room above the ladde