TCD MS 11274/61 folio 2 recto
[28 February 1917]
what not maybe a Church or a House or anything else those are targets. Then you ask me about how long “big guns last”. You must have been right whatever you said for as with people they vary a good deal though not I should say lived to the age of Mr Gladstone or Genie Meredith. The people who set on you almost certainly knew nothing about it. You see a big gun is a very comfortable term & comprehensive varying from a 6” Howitzer to a 15” Naval Gun or 17” for all I know. And as you know with Howitzers the charge is variable and naturally one used with full charge on longer range work gets old quicker than one used on short targets with a low charge. The thing is wrapped about with all sorts of conditions and circumstances. Anyway so far as we are concerned it runs well into the thousand of rounds. With ‘guns’ the conditions are quite different and I know little about it. The whole question is very interesting and caused much study & correspondance and you can only tell your answers that it is engaging the best attention of those whose business it is to study these things and that books themselves will be printed on the subject in fact have even already been. The war is now more interesting is it not? Very much a case of ‘What have