Julia's crew consisted of a Lieutenant and eight men. The Lieutenant and seven of the men were grouped around the breech of the gun when I arrived. The eighth man squatted to the left by a field-telephone with the receiver held to his ear. Commandant L---- introduced me to the Lieutenant, and then asked whether his Captain had reached the observation-post. The Lieutenant had not heard from him yet, but imagined he must get there any moment. It began to rain hard, much to the vexation of the Commandant, who feared it would hide the blockhouse from the observer and put an end to the bombardment. "Oh! no," said the Lieutenant; "he's only 270 yards distant from it. He'll be able to see it all right." On the board floor to the left, between the telephone and the front wall of the excavation, were piled twenty-five or thirty wicked-looking 150-millimetre high-explosive shells. They were conical in shape, about 2-1/2 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, made of steel, with a copper band around them near the base, and a copper nose. I started to lift one of them, and only succeeded at the second attempt. They weighed about 110 pounds apiece. Stacked next to them were a corresponding number of hollow copper cylinders containing stiff little cream-colored children's belts, with eyelet-holes down the middle, coiled neatly inside them. Some of them had one coil; others two coils, one on top of the other; others three coils superimposed. These were the propelling charges for the shells, and were of three strengths according as one, two or three of the coils of cream-colored explosive were put in the copper shells. They were topped off with a heavy felt pad which fitted neatly into the cylinder. Meantime the rain came down in torrents and began to leak through the thin plank roofing in little streams which were very hard to dodge. The Lieutenant showed us a bomb-proof which he had just begun to build into the earth wall of the cellar, behind the stack of shells. He was going to cover it with a concrete roof, pile a few feet of earth on top of that, then some sand-bags, and top the whole off with boulders, so as to make any shell hitting it explode at once on the surface, instead of boring half-way down before exploding. He was doing all this work with his eight men at night when they were not handling the gun. During the day they slept except when, as now, they wanted to disturb the sleep of the enemy. This bomb-proof was only meant for refuge when the Germans began bombarding him. The men's regular sleeping-quarters were a little to the rear. And still the rain came down, the air became raw and cold, and the little waterfalls became harder and harder to dodge. But the man at the telephone squatted patiently by the wall, and his seven mates chatted placidly together in incomprehensible Flemish, switching instantly to French when answering any question the Lieutenant put to them.