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At one point along a screened road we stopped and clambered up a hill to a French anti-aircraft battery, ^[[and were entertained by]] an energetic commander who had weathered two years in a field battery and consequently many stories of shells, which [[strikethrough]] [[all]] [[/strikethrough]] gave him his magnificent bearing and was [[strikethrough]] [[??]] [[/strikethrough]] the reason for his decorations!
The commandant and his adjutant showed us the sighting devices which are many and intricate, and the gun with its workings. Further up the hill were numerous detectaphones and across the valley was another observation station to record certain necessary measurements in the trigonometric calculations.
The gun itself was one of the famous "75's", with its carriage displaced by a vertical mounting which was marked with angles and degrees.  The shells with time fuses [[strikethrough]] [[??]] [[/strikethrough]] which were cut by a special punch to a calculated moment