But the gunner is _toujours en vedette_. He must stay with his gun. If his battery is firing, he can take no thought of safety. He must expose himself. Shells or no shells, he must go about his duty. Thus, though the day of the race forward with the guns is over for the moment, the gunners’ casualties go on steadily, in little driblets, it is true, but nevertheless mounting up to a long roll of honour that will show future generations that, in the long months of trench warfare, the Royal Artillery, true to its grand traditions, did its work as steadfastly and gallantly as in the thrilling days of the retreat from Mons and the advance on the Marne. The gunners have had a difficult task in Flanders. Since the battle of the Marne the great offensives on our front have been with the enemy. The Germans, even when advancing, never forget for a moment that he who goes forward may also have to fall back, and their striving has always been to secure for themselves good defensible positions from which their guns can dominate our lines. The flatness of the country has made the work of artillery observation both perilous and difficult, and the heroism with which the observation officers exposed themselves in the fighting round Ypres, at Neuve Chapelle, and at Festubert, to mention but a few concrete cases, is a chapter by itself in the roll of fame of the Royal Artillery in this war. The time has not yet come when one may write freely of this most thrilling and perilous of duties at the front, the observing for the guns, but I have seen the observation officers at their work, and feel very strongly that one cannot pass over their gallantry and tenacity in silence. I have witnessed the growth of our artillery; with it I have passed from the discouraging days of the shell shortage to the brighter era that dawned at Hooge. I have spent many absorbingly interesting days with the gunners in the batteries, with the observation officers at their stations. I have seen in action every type of gun, every type of howitzer, big and small, used in our army to-day. I know the voices of them all--the short, sharp report of the field-gun, the ear-splitting crash of the 4·7, the air-shaking roar of the heavy howitzer, whose shell in its passage through the air over one’s head produces long-drawn-out reverberating waves of sound that resemble nothing on earth unless it be the echo of a fast motorcar rushing through miles of empty, narrow streets.