Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/136

 seven miles distant. Bradley and I heard before that the affair was going to come off and got down to the tracks just as they began to fire. There were two cars in the outfit, one for the shells, and the other for the gun itself. Great jacks were propped under the south side of the car, presumably to keep it from being knocked over by the recoil. The shells, which happened to be "220's," were shoved from the other car up to the breech in a long trough. The brass powder casings were being carried by hand and pushed into the gun immediately after the projectile itself had been put in place. The men were working well and sending four or five shots a minute, which isn't bad for a gun of that caliber. One of the officers standing near told us if we got directly behind the gun and twenty or thirty feet away from it we would see the shell emerging from the mouth. We couldn't find it at all at first but after a few trials, we managed to locate it almost before we heard the explosion. It looked like a small black ball and appeared to be shooting directly upwards; and if you strained your eyes you could see it for eight and sometimes even ten seconds.