big shells
 incoming...

"The Germans had set up a railroad gun with a 16 inch barrel. We had a hill just in front of us little bit and they had to clear that. The shells just cleared us and maybe as far as here to those houses over there. Oh...once in awhile they'd get right back in our area. They used a delayed action - to fire, you know, and of course it had been raining there for months and they'd go down in the ground probably three foot and blow off a big mole hills about - oh, a good two and half feet or 30 inches high and so big around.

"Well, we had this French kid and an Italian kid and they worked for days building' a foot trench and they found some old timbers and put timbers on it and covered it with about that much dirt, you know. Because we had so many air bursts with an awful lot of flak - anyway. The second day they had it one of those 16 inch shells hit just right on the corner of their hole. It blew their walls away from their logs and their logs all come down. One kid was a Catholic and they said he was sure countin' his beads - sliding em off and countin' em." (Bernie L. Stokes, Summer, 2001)

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