Soon after leaving Mailly we had the
privilege of beholding some of the four hundred centimetre
guns of France, all prepared and ready to travel at
a minute’s notice along the railway lines to
the section where they might be needed. Some
idea of their size may be obtained from the fact that
there were ten axles to the base on which they travel.
They were all disguised by the system of camouflage
employed by the French Army, and at a very short distance
they blend with the landscape and become almost invisible.
Each gun bears a different name, “Alsace,”
“Lorraine,” etc., and with that strange
irony and cynical wit of the French trooper, at the
request of the men of one battery, one huge gun has
been christened “Mosquito,” “Because
it stings.”
The French often use a bitter and
biting humour in speaking of the enemy. For instance,
amongst the many pets of the men, the strangest I
saw was a small hawk sitting on the wrist of a soldier
who had trained him. The bird was the personification
of evil. If any one approached he snapped at
them and endeavoured to bite them. I asked the
man why he kept him, and he replied that they had
quite good sport in the trenches when they allowed
the hawk to hunt small birds and field mice.
Then his expression changing from jovial good humour
to grimness, he added, “You know, I call him
‘Zepp,’ because he kills the little ones,”
(parcequ’il tue les tous petits.)