THE VOICE OF THE GUNS.

BY F. J. SALMON.

What man, unless he be entirely devoid of imagination, has not been profoundly impressed when, for the first time, he hears the distant roll of the guns? How many a soldier makes it the theme of his first letter home? It is the first intimation his relatives get that he is really at the front. And yet, from the sound alone, he will get very little idea as to how far off the line really is. The conformation of the ground, the wind and possibly other climatic conditions affect the transmission of sound in an extraordinary way. One can often hear the guns from very far back, whereas from closer up nothing can be heard at all. If there is a bombardment on, the noise is continuous but varies in intensity either with the wind or according to the number of heavy pieces that are firing at the same instant.

Later on, if he is observant, the soldier may get to know the individual voices of some of these guns and recognise the bursts of their shell.

On first coming into the line he is unable to distinguish the meaning of the various sounds, and the report of one of our own field-guns firing behind him is likely to cause him more alarm than a Boche rifleman sniping at his unwittingly exposed head. The 18-pounder field-gun makes a most ear-splitting crack for those who stand in front of the battery, and, moreover, the sound seems to come from only a few yards away. The sniper’s bullet will strike the parapet with a resounding crack, followed by the whirr of its passage through the air, and a new-comer might easily imagine that one of our own men had fired from the next traverse.

The German field-gun, in common with our own 18-pounder, and, in fact, all high-velocity guns, always sounds a good deal nearer than it really is, and as the shell travels very fast and reaches the front-line trenches very shortly after, or, sometimes, even before, the whizz of its approach, it gives the infantry the impression that the battery is in some impossible position just behind the German support line.

The ‘whizz-bang’ and the ‘pip-squeak’ are terms applied to the same German field-gun by people who are shot at by him at different ranges.

In the first case there is a warning whirr of approach, but the shell reaches the man who is ‘pip-squeaked’ while it is still travelling faster than sound, and he gets the ‘pip’ of the explosion first and the whizz afterwards—if there is enough of him left to hear it!

The voice of the German 77-millimetre field-gun can usually be distinguished from the various other guns, trench mortars, bombs and shells that are continually heard along the line. It sounds like two planks being banged together in a courtyard where there is some echo from the walls.

The heavy howitzers make far less noise, and the report cannot always be detected, but the sound of the shell in the air is unmistakable. It is a curious, intermittent, hollow, rushing sound, with an ever-deepening note which dies away, if it is not coming near you, just before the rending ‘crump’ of the explosion.

This ‘crump’ is a sound-phenomenon which I am unable to explain. Whereas the lighter shell goes off with an ordinary ‘bang,’ the 15-centimetre and larger projectiles sound like a whole family of explosions going off not quite at the same instant.

The German light field-howitzer in its acoustic effects is much like a smaller edition of its larger brothers. Of the huge 42-centimetre shells I have had, I am glad to say, no experience so far.

Another sound that one gets to know with experience is the report of the trench mortar. This is not distinguishable if there is much noise going on, and is best likened to the ‘clap’ of a pigeon-trap. My ear has been somewhat trained by much shikar in Ceylon jungles, and this has held me in good stead on at least one occasion, when, after blowing a mine, the Germans fired four trench mortars at a group of miners and myself in a front-line sap. I distinctly heard the ‘clap’ of the report and was able to give the warning to disperse. There was not much cover, but we had good luck and no one was hit.

A pleasant ‘drawing-room’ voice is that of our beautiful little field-howitzer. It goes off with more of a puff than a bang, and the shell sails away with a soft whirring note which is lost in the distance long before the formidable crash of the burst is wafted back from the German lines.

An alarming sound that one used to hear earlier in the war, when ammunition was of a lower quality than it is now, was that of a shell with a ‘stripped’ driving band. Such a shell will whirl through the air at any angle and will land, possibly base first, a mile or two short of its mark.

One of the most encouraging of sounds is the dull thud of a German ‘blind’ shell, especially if, as often happens, they are coming over in appreciable numbers. We are sometimes treated to furious ‘strafes’ with shells of the ‘toy-shop’ quality, of which only a small percentage detonate properly, while a somewhat larger proportion go off with an impotent pop, and the majority fail to explode at all.

‘Smoky Bill’ used to fire such shells. ‘Smoky Bill’ was a funny old thing dating back from the ’seventies. A vast column of smoke rising from behind a certain wood in the German lines was the first signal that he had fired, and this was followed by a fearsome whirr in the air, and then, five times out of six, by a dull thud and nothing more! We knew where ‘Smoky Bill’ was, but nobody ever fired at him—he was one of the side-shows of that sector and never did anyone any harm.

Now ‘Percy’ is another fellow altogether. ‘Percy’ is the long 13-centimetre high-velocity German gun. At most ranges ‘Percy’ comes quicker than sound, and there is no warning of his approach. He goes off with a mighty bang, and his shell, when you do hear it, comes along with a terrific shriek. The only encouraging thought about ‘Percy’ is that he is not very common down the line, whereas we have many guns that must give the enemy similar thrills.

In order to feel thoroughly optimistic about the war one must hear the voice of the French ‘75’ when he is really angry. I happened to be at an observation-post down in the French lines one evening when word had come down from the front line that enemy trench mortars were very active in a certain sector. Two batteries of ‘75’s’ immediately took on the offenders. One or two rounds for réglage were sent over from the première pièce of each battery, there was a slight correction for range (‘diminuez de cinquante!’), and then they literally pummelled the Hun trenches for about a minute and a half. A confused roar of ear-splitting cracks, a wild swirl of shells, and two continuous rows of black spurts shot up from the German trenches. There was one gap in the wall of bursting melinite, which gradually narrowed, and then the firing stopped. A few words down the telephone, and then, with a loud crash, two salvoes went into the remaining gap. The captain in the observation-post merely remarked ‘Bon!’ and sat down to record his targets. These short vigorous strafes must be very disconcerting to friend Hun, and although, of course, every round did not actually hit the mark, the shooting was remarkably accurate and the majority did get some part of the trench. One can imagine the effect of the last two salvoes on the previously unstrafed portion where seekers after shelter would have gathered!

On another occasion, at the beginning of one of the minor battles of the war, I was at the same post, and these two batteries were firing at a most remarkable speed, the general principle being to return anything that was sent over by the enemy with interest—a thing that the Frenchman always seems able to do unless his guns happen to be hopelessly outnumbered by some local concentration of the Germans.

Many and interesting are the various sound-phenomena of the battlefield. Why is it, for instance, that once when a certain battery was firing over my head from behind a crest the rush of the shell was heard going away in an opposite direction, so that it seemed, at first, as if the breech had blown out; and that when I approached the battery the shells sounded as if they were going straight up in the air? Why is it that, from some positions, the shells from our own batteries are heard to give forth a crackling sound instead of the usual swirl when speeding over to the enemy? This last effect may occasionally be due to a badly centred shell, but, I think, not always. One is too busy in war-time to look into these interesting details, and in peace-time one has not the opportunity!

I remember an occasion when the guns made a very effective accompaniment to a song. I was lunching below ground in an observation-post dug-out, and a very pleasant-voiced lady was singing to us from a gramophone. I forget what the song was, but the regular bang and whirr of a battery firing overhead certainly improved the effect. We shouted up to the observer to know if the shells were ‘ours’ or ‘theirs,’ and elicited the interesting information that it was the Germans who were supplying the accompaniment!

The sound of the enemy shells is all too well known to most of us out here, but there appear to be not many who have actually seen one in the air. I have seen German shells coming towards me on two separate occasions, but have, so far, never met anyone who has had the same experience. This seems strange, for there is no reason why it should not happen fairly frequently. It is quite an easy matter to see one of our own shells leaving a howitzer, and sometimes a gun, if one stands straight behind it, and it should only be a question of happening to look in the right direction to see one coming the other way.

It was in the spring of last year near ‘Windy Corner’ that I first saw a German shell on the wing. I had not been long at the front, and I instinctively looked up when I heard it coming. What I saw was a minute but very rapidly increasing speck in the sky, moving so fast that I was somehow unable to judge where it was going to fall. I accordingly made myself as small as possible, but it burst in a farm at the comparatively safe distance of some 150 yards. It was from a 15-centimetre howitzer, and was immediately followed by another, which I again saw by looking in the same direction. As this was followed by a flight of ‘whizz bangs,’ and as I had no pressing business there at the moment, I hurried from that well-known and unwholesome spot.

It was many months before I again had a similar experience, and this time it was rather more thrilling. I was walking over some open country towards the trenches in company with my sergeant-major, and the Germans had started shelling a battery behind us. They were firing with the ordinary 77-millimetre field-gun, and the first few rounds were short and unpleasantly close to us. The Hun battery must have been some way back, as we heard the report and the warning whistle of the shell some two or three seconds before it arrived. At the next report I looked up instinctively to gauge the direction in which the shell was going. The range had been increased, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of a tiny speck in the sky which grew larger and disappeared close over my head in a small fraction of a second. It did not appear to come straight, but described a ‘googly’ curve. How much of this was due to its actual path, and how much the mere effect produced on the eye by its extreme speed, I cannot say, but I know that shells do not travel straight but affect a kind of ‘slice.’

On such occasions those who duck or take cover are usually too late. The rush of its near approach reached my sergeant-major after I had seen it go over, and though he has a delightful contempt for Germany’s efforts to destroy him, which I am not always able to share, on this occasion it was I who stood up apparently unconcerned while he crouched on the ground waiting for a shell which had already burst in the battery some 200 yards behind us!

When a shell passes very near to one its whistle increases to the roar of an express train, and when there is anything like a heavy bombardment on it is only those shells which pass dangerously close that one can hear above the general din.

More disconcerting than the actual burst of the shell is the ‘whirr’ of the splinters or, in the case of shrapnel, the loud ‘miaow’ of the flying bullets. I suppose our gallant airmen have more shrapnel fired at them than anyone else, and the loud ‘clump, clump, clump’ of the bursting ‘Archies,’ followed by the whine of three hundred bullets flying from each shell, is an almost continuous tune down the line even on the quietest of days.

Happily, man can accustom himself to most things, and to the seasoned soldier these sounds arouse little more interest than the rumble of London traffic to the Cockney—unless, of course, he is actually being fired at himself!

But to-day (July 1) the distant sound of the guns is once more stirring me as it did on my first morning in Flanders over a year ago. The rumble is more persistent and continuous than it has ever been. Yesterday my work took me down to the line, and I witnessed some pretty ‘strafing,’ but it is only back here at head-quarters that the true meaning of things is borne in upon me. Whichever side of the hill I stand, and according as the breeze varies, the thud and roar is continuous—it comes from three points of the compass. It is useless to speculate, but, whatever may happen in the future, this, at least, is a black day for Germany—the voices of the mighty guns of Britain and of France are raised in such a chorus as was never heard before.