Casualties must occur, and in
spite of them the work of the gun must go on.
Casualties had occurred at that station. More than half the original
battery was gone. The little shelter house was splintered in a hundred
places. There were shell holes throughout the field, and the breech of
one gun had recently been shattered and was undergoing repair.
The drill was over and the gunners stood at attention. I asked
permission to photograph the battery, and it was cheerfully given. One
after the other I took the guns, until I had taken four. The gunners
waited smilingly expectant. For the last gun I found I had no film,
but I could not let it go at that. So I pointed the empty camera at it
and snapped the shutter. It would never do to show discrimination.
Somewhere in London are all those pictures. They have never been sent
to me. No doubt a watchful English government pounced on them in the
mail, and, in connection with my name, based on them most unjust
suspicions. They were very interesting. There was Captain Mignot, and
the two imposing officers from General Foch's staff; there were
smiling young French gunners; there was the telemeter, which cost,
they told me, ten thousand francs, and surely deserved to have its
picture taken, and there was one, not too steady, of a patch of sunny
sky and a balloon-shaped white cloud, where another German shrapnel
had burst overhead.
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