These batteries and regiments were learning gunnery and no scarcity of shells was permitted to interfere with their education. One officer told me that it was his opinion that one brigade firing at this schooling post during a course of six weeks, had expended more ammunition than all of the field artillery of the United States Army has fired during the entire period since the Civil War. The Seventy-five shells cost approximately ten dollars apiece, but neither the French nor American artillery directors felt that a penny's worth was being wasted. They said cannon firing could not be learned entirely out of a book. I had talked with a French instructor, a Yale graduate, who had been two years with the guns at the front, and I had asked him what in his opinion was the most disconcerting thing that could happen to effect the morale of new gunners under actual fire. I wanted some idea of what might be expected of American artillerymen when they made their initial appearance on the line. We discussed the effect of counter battery fire, the effect on gun crews of asphyxiating gas, either that carried on the wind from the enemy trenches or that sent over in gas shells. We considered the demoralising influences of aerial attacks on gun positions behind the line. "They are all bad," my informant concluded. "But they are expected. Men can stand without complaint and without qualm any danger that is directed at them by the foe they are fighting. The thing that really bothers, though, is the danger of death or injury from their own weapons or ammunition. You see, many times there is such a thing as a faulty shell, although careful inspection in the munitions plants has reduced this danger to a percentage of about one in ten thousand. "At the beginning of the war when every little tin shop all over the world was converted into a munitions factory to supply the great need of shells, much faulty ammunition reached the front lines. Some of the shells would explode almost as soon as they left the gun. They are called shorts. The English, who had the same trouble, call them 'muzzle bursts.' "Sometimes the shell would explode in the bore of the cannon, in which case the cannoneers were usually killed either by pieces of the shell itself or bits of the cannon. The gunners have to sit beside the cannon when it is fired, and the rest of the gun crew are all within eight feet of it. If there is an explosion in the breech of the gun, it usually wipes out most of the crew. A muzzle burst, or a breech explosion, is one of the most disconcerting things that could happen in a battery.