Explore "Men, Women and Guns" by H.C. McNeile on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
However, to be serious. It was as he came away from this scene of alarm / and despondency that Jim met an old pal who boasted the gunner badge, / and whom conversation revealed as the proud owner of an Archie, or / anti-aircraft gun. And as the salient is perhaps more fruitful in / aeroplanes than any other part of the line, and the time approached five / o'clock (which is generally the hour of their afternoon activity), Jim / went to see the fun.
In front, an observing biplane buzzed slowly to and fro, watching the / effect of a mother[1] shooting at some mark behind the German lines. / With the gun concealed in the trees, a gunner subaltern altered his / range and direction as each curt wireless message flashed from the / 'plane. "Lengthen 200 -- half a degree left. " And so on till they got it. / Occasionally, with a vicious crack, a German anti-aircraft shell would / explode in the air above in a futile endeavour to reach the observer, / and a great mass of acrid yellow or black fumes would disperse slowly. / Various machines, each intent on its own job, rushed to and fro, and in / the distance, like a speck in the sky, a German monoplane was travelling / rapidly back over its own lines, having finished its reconnaissance.