The front line belong to the men who worked there—rifle-men and machine gunners, mortarman, forward artillery observers, communications men, and medics.
Could any spectacle, for instance, be more grimly whimsical than that of gunners using science to shatter men's bodies while, close at hand, surgeons use it to restore them?
Range Tables were created that allowed gunners to look up environmental conditions and the distance they wanted to fire, and the table would tell them the angle to set the canon.
Evans could swing his little sixteen-inch telescope around like a tail gunner in a dogfight, spending no more than a couple of seconds on any particular point in the sky.
In July 1940, Robert Philpott was a gunner on British battleship HMS Hood when it was ordered to open fire on French sailors, men who been allies just weeks earlier.
It was intended to have a crew of 27 men: 1 commander, 2 drivers, 1 signaler, 1 artillery officer, 12 artillery men, 8 machine gunners, and 2 mechanics.
There would be two gunners on either side of the helicopter and when the pilot managed to herd a group of goats together into a tight pack they would open fire and wipe all of them out.
Calm of eye, cool of feature, an old gray-bearded gunner-I can see him to this day-approached the cannon, put it in position, and took aim for a good while.
Quickly shifting his control on the fly, the rear gunner slaves the rear upper gun turret to his fire control system, and creates a sheet of lead that the Zero flies directly into.