Ed Stewart: Artillery Fire

Transcript: It has a screaming sound sometimes, of course, the mortar is dangerous because it has no sound it just drops. Because it's a high angle, it comes on down, because sometimes you hear a pop if it's not too far off. But it's the screaming sound of 288s, which was a major artillery on the part of the Germans, and at first it's absolutely frightening, it's a nightmare. It puts you into another nightmarish existence. I eventually get accustomed to it and begin to make judgements about it. Is it coming in close? Is it going to go far or what? And you begin to be able to estimate pretty much where it's going to hit. And then you're...the sound itself is replaced by the need to make a judgement about it. So it hit here, you know the pattern of the firing. It comes in threes. And then it's fifty yards out, it's twenty-five, well how about the third one? So then you become preoccupied with that. You almost begin to like the sound because this gives you some information of what you might do, or what's going to happen.

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