Men, Women and Guns

Publisher Marketing: "What does it feel like to be shelled?" she demanded. "Explain it to me." Under the influence of my deceased uncle's most excellent port I did so. Soothed and in that expansive frame of mind induced by the old and bold, I drew her a picture-vivid, startling, wonderful. And when I had finished, the dear old lady looked at me. "Dreadful!" she murmured. "Did I ever tell you of the terrible experience I had on the front at Eastbourne, when my bath-chair attendant became inebriated and upset me?" Slowly and sorrowfully I finished the decanter-and went to bed. But seriously, my masters, it is a hard thing that my aunt asked of me. There are many things worse than shelling-the tea-party you find in progress on your arrival on leave; the utterances of war experts; the non-arrival of the whisky from England. But all of those can be imagined by people who have not suffered; they have a standard, a measure of comparison. Shelling-no. The explosion of a howitzer shell near you is a definite, actual fact-which is unlike any other fact in the world, except the explosion of another howitzer shell still nearer. Many have attempted to describe the noise it makes as the most explainable part about it. And then you're no wiser.