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  SERVANTS OF THE GUNS

  BY

  JEFFERY E. JEFFERY


      _By the ears and the eyes and the brain,
        By the limbs and the hands and the wings,
      We are slaves to our masters the guns,
        But their slaves are the masters of kings!_
                                          GILBERT FRANKAU.


  LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

  1917

  [_All rights reserved_]


  PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BECCLES,
  ENGLAND


  _TO

  ONE WHO KNOWS NOTHING OF GUNS

  BUT MUCH OF LIFE

  MY MOTHER_




  CONTENTS


  PART I

  THE NEW "UBIQUE"

  BEGINNING AGAIN
  A BATTERY IN BEING
  "IN THE LINE"
  SPIT AND POLISH
  A BATTLE


  PART II

  AND THE OLD

  BILFRED
  "THE PROGRESS OF PICKERSDYKE"
  SNATTY
  FIVE-FOUR-EIGHT


  PART III

  IN ENEMY HANDS

  SOME EXPERIENCES OF A PRISONER OF WAR
  HENRY




PART I

THE NEW "UBIQUE"




BEGINNING AGAIN


As the long troop train rumbled slowly over the water-logged wastes of
Flanders, I sat in the corner of a carriage which was littered with all
the _debris_ of a twenty-four hours' journey and watched the fiery
winter's sun set gorgeously. It was Christmas evening. Inevitably my
mind went back to that other journey of sixteen months ago when we set
forth so proudly, so exultantly to face the test of war.

But how different, how utterly different is everything now! Last time,
with the sun shining brilliantly from a cloudless sky and the French
sentries along the line waving enthusiastically, we passed cheerfully
through the pleasant land of France towards our destination on the
frontier. I was a subaltern then, a subordinate member of a battery
which, according to pre-war standards, was equipped and trained to
perfection--and I can say this without presumption, for having only
joined it in July I had had no share in the making of it. But I had
been in it long enough to appreciate its intense _esprit-de-corps_, long
enough to share the absolute confidence in its efficiency which inspired
every man in it from the major to the second trumpeter.

But now it is midwinter, the second winter of the war, and the French
sentries no longer wave to us, for they have seen too many train-loads
of English troops to be more than mildly interested. The war to which we
set out so light-heartedly sixteen months ago has proved itself to be
not the "greatest of games," but the greatest of all ghastly horrors
threatening the final disruption of civilised humanity. More than a year
has passed and the end is not in sight. But the cause is as righteous,
the victory as certain now as it was then.... The methods and practice
of warfare have been revolutionised. Theory after theory has been
disproved by the devastating power of the high explosive and the giant
gun. Horse and field batteries no longer dash into action to the music
of jingling harness and thudding hoofs. They creep in by night with
infinite precautions and place their guns in casemates which are often
ten feet thick; they occupy the same position not for hours, but for
months at a time; they fire at targets which are sometimes only fifty
yards or even less in front of their own infantry, with the knowledge
that the smallest error may mean death to their comrades; and the
control of their shooting is no longer an affair of good eyesight and
common sense, but of science, complicated instruments, and a
multiplicity of telephones.

And I, a novice at all this kind of work, am no longer a subaltern. I am
directly responsible for the welfare and efficiency of the battery which
this long train is bearing into the zone of war. How we fare when we get
there, what kind of tasks are allotted to us, and how we succeed in
coping with them I hope to record in due course. But this I know
now--the human material with which I have to deal is good enough. We
have the advantage of being a homogeneous unit, for we belong to one of
the "locally raised" divisions. With only a very few exceptions (notably
the sergeant-major, who is a "serving soldier" of vast proportions and
great merit), the N.C.O.'s and