Something flashed . . . a German sniper

So, the man who went out with somebody, was just looking around like that and he saw something up there looks like it flashed. A German sniper, firing this way. So, we put a rope on, on a hat and climbed the tree, and put the rope over the end of it and come down like that. Fasten it onto, like that, and pull it up the tree. And ten chances to one, that the German sniper would be thinking somebody's crawling up that tree and fire some shots. So, you were back here and you were writing this all down, with your signaller telling ya, "Okay, it's one more shot." So, he would figure that out . . . go to another command post. They would set it on the guns. Every gun would have a mark, or have drifted up like that for the elevation . . . like that to get onto it. Every gun would do the same. So, when he wanted to get five rounds in there, only one gun is fired, but every gun's got it marked on his thing. So, when it comes time to him to, say, fire five rounds, they get to fire five rounds and drop it right on the enemy tank. The sounds, they were deadly, they were deadly. You never thought that you would hear again. The hearing, it was deadly, pound, pound, pound, from the day we went to France 'til the war was over. You never saw any birds. And I remember the last day, when the guns had stopped firing, and the trees . . . lots of trees around. By golly, the birds came back. But there were no birds when the guns were firing, which is . . . it wasn't only your gun firing. There may be 25,000 guns firing.