The raid was just like any other raid, except that it happened to be the first barrage we fired, the first barrage table we worked out, the first time we used the 106 fuse, and the first time that at the eleventh hour we were given the task, in which someone else had failed, of cutting the wire. I had been down with the Major when he shot the battery in,--and hadn’t liked it. In places there was no communication trench at all and we had to crawl on our bellies over a chaos of tumbled earth and revetments in full view of any sniper, and having to make frequent stops because the infernal signaller would lag behind and turn off. And a few hours before the show the Major was called upon to go down there and cut the wire at all costs. Pip Don was signalling officer. He and every available signaller, stacks of wire and lamps, spread themselves in a living chain between the Major and the front-line trench and me at the battery. Before going the Major asked me if I had the barrage at my finger tips. I had. Then if he didn’t get back in time, he said, I could carry out the show all right? I could,--and watched him go with a mouth full of bitter curses against the Battery Commander who had failed to cut that wire. My brain drew lurid pictures of stick-bombs, minnies, pineapples, pip-squeaks and five-nines being the reason why the Major wouldn’t get back “in time.” And I sat down by the telephonist, praying for the call that would indicate at least his safe arrival in the front-line trench. Beside every gun lay a pile of 106 fuses ready. Orders were to go on firing if every German plane in the entire Vaterland came over.--Still they weren’t through on the ’phone! I went along from gun to gun, making sure that everything was all right and insisting on the necessity of the most careful laying, stopping from time to time to yell to the telephonist “Through yet?” and getting a “No, sir” every time that almost made me hear those cursed minnies dropping on the Major. At last he called up. The tension was over. We had to add a little for the 106 fuse but each gun was registered on the wire within four rounds. The Major was a marvel at that. Then the shoot began. Aeroplanes came winging over, regardless of our Archies. But we, regardless of the aeroplanes, were doing “battery fire 3 secs.” as steadily as if we were on Salisbury Plain, getting from time to time the order, “Five minutes more right.” We had three hundred rounds to do the job with and only about three per gun were left when the order “Stop” arrived. I stopped and hung on to the ’phone. The Major’s voice, coming as though from a million miles away, said, “Napoo wire. How many more rounds?” “Three per gun, sir.” “Right.--All guns five degrees more right for the onlooker, add two hundred, three rounds gun fire.”