It was hard to say:
"Sorry! . . . We've got to go slow with ammunition."
That, now, was ancient history. For some time the fields had grown a
new crop of British batteries. Month after month our weight of metal
increased, and while the field-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.
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