In the other the image is inverted, upside down. Now!
By this screw the images are made to approach, until one is
superimposed exactly over the other. Immediately on the lighted dial
beneath is shown the altitude, in metres."
I put my eyes to the openings, and tried to imagine an aeroplane
overhead, manoeuvring to drop a bomb or a dart on me while I
calculated its altitude. I could not do it.
Next I was shown the guns. They were the famous
seventy-five-millimetre guns of France, transformed into aircraft guns
by the simple expedient of installing them in a pit with sloping
sides, so that their noses pointed up and out. To swing them round, so
that they pointed readily toward any portion of the sky, a circular
framework of planks formed a round rim to the pit, and on this runway,
heavily greased, the muzzles were swung about.
The gun drill began. It was executed promptly, skilfully. There was no
bungling, not a wrong motion or an unnecessary one, as they went
through the movements of loading, sighting and firing the guns. It was
easy to see why French artillery has won its renown. The training of
the French artilleryman is twice as severe as that of the infantryman.
Each man, in addition to knowing his own work on the gun, must be able
to do the work of all the eleven others.
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