Each of us
in turn solemnly hefted the bomb to feel its weight. I should guess it
weighed thirty pounds--say, ten pounds for the case and twenty pounds
for its load of fearsome ingredients. Finally, yet foremost, we were
invited to inspect that thing which is the pride and the brag of this
particular arm of the German Army--a balloon-cannon, so called.
The balloon-gun of this size is--or was at the date when I saw it--an
exclusively German institution. I believe the Allies have balloon-guns
too, but theirs are smaller, according to what the Germans say. This
one was mounted on a squatty half-turret at the tail end of an armored-
steel truck. It had a mechanism as daintily adjusted as a lady's watch
and much more accurate, and when being towed by its attendant
automobile, which has harnessed within it the power of a hundred and odd
draft horses, it has been known to cover sixty English miles in an hour,
for all that its weight is that of very many loaded vans.
The person in authority here was a youthful and blithe lieutenant--an
Iron Cross man--with pale, shallow blue eyes and a head of bright blond
hair.
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