Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/120

102 mission to locate the pieces of the first battalion according to the technique of actual warfare. He got camouflage nets which, with the natural cover, hid the positions so successfully that an aeroplane photograph, taken for our instruction, was innocent of warlike indications.

The first platoon of Battery B was scarcely more than fifty meters from Major Johnson's command post, Observatory 1. The pieces were echeloned, each under its own camouflage net.

The registration progressed, as registrations do, to a precise and dreary measure. Without warning and with no unusual noise Battery B's number 2 piece was shattered by a premature burst. For a moment a cloud of smoke obscured it. As it drifted away we saw that the camouflage net had disappeared, that the caisson was blackened and smouldering, that the breech of the piece had gone. The crew, from an ordered group, had become a thing, scattered and incomplete. Men stumbled oddly as they ran out of the cloud. There were not enough of them.

"Cease firing!" Major Johnson ordered. "Where's the surgeon?"

The operator passed the word over the telephone. Flames sprang from the shouldering caisson, Shells there were evidently bursting. Major Johnson ordered everyone from the observatory, and, followed by his adjutant, Captain Reed, and Captain Ravenel walked forward and threw sand at the caisson. Unasked, volunteers sprang from the ranks into the danger zone. In a few minutes the fire was extinguished. Those on the outskirts questioned.

"How much damage? Anybody hurt?"

And from the group about the smashed piece came back the quiet answer:

"The gunner and No. 1 killed."