Now ‘Percy’ is another fellow altogether. ‘Percy’ is the long 13-centimetre high-velocity German gun. At most ranges ‘Percy’ comes quicker than sound, and there is no warning of his approach. He goes off with a mighty bang, and his shell, when you do hear it, comes along with a terrific shriek. The only encouraging thought about ‘Percy’ is that he is not very common down the line, whereas we have many guns that must give the enemy similar thrills. In order to feel thoroughly optimistic about the war one must hear the voice of the French ‘75’ when he is really angry. I happened to be at an observation-post down in the French lines one evening when word had come down from the front line that enemy trench mortars were very active in a certain sector. Two batteries of ‘75’s’ immediately took on the offenders. One or two rounds for _réglage_ were sent over from the _première pièce_ of each battery, there was a slight correction for range (‘_diminuez de cinquante!_’), and then they literally pummelled the Hun trenches for about a minute and a half. A confused roar of ear-splitting cracks, a wild swirl of shells, and two continuous rows of black spurts shot up from the German trenches. There was one gap in the wall of bursting melinite, which gradually narrowed, and then the firing stopped. A few words down the telephone, and then, with a loud crash, two salvoes went into the remaining gap. The captain in the observation-post merely remarked ‘_Bon!_’ and sat down to record his targets. These short vigorous strafes must be very disconcerting to friend Hun, and although, of course, every round did not actually hit the mark, the shooting was remarkably accurate and the majority did get some part of the trench. One can imagine the effect of the last two salvoes on the previously unstrafed portion where seekers after shelter would have gathered! On another occasion, at the beginning of one of the minor battles of the war, I was at the same post, and these two batteries were firing at a most remarkable speed, the general principle being to return anything that was sent over by the enemy with interest—a thing that the Frenchman always seems able to do unless his guns happen to be hopelessly outnumbered by some local concentration of the Germans.