"Raise your pitch to forty degrees, load phosphorous and fire on my command."

"What is it?!"

Captain Hoxa screamed out one long word over the incoming explosions. "Infantry!!!"

The breech operators cranked frantically on the elevator controls. The heavy steaming gun barrels edged slowly skyward and trained in on the approaching troops. "Ready," each operator shouted in turn.

"Be ready to continue tracking them as we shoot!" Hoxa shouted. He raised his riding crop high. "Fire!"

The phosphorous rounds weighed less than the shorter high explosive shells, allowing the handlers and loaders to shave a full second off their reloading cycle. Hoxa had given the other two companies orders to redirect fire any time they saw white phosphorous explosions, and as planned, larger white and yellow flashes sprang up around the first impacts.

"Up two degrees! Reload, Fire! Up one! Fire! Up one!" It dragged on for what seemed hours as the tempest continued to rage in the valley. All the while Hoxa stood on a small mound between #2 and #3, looking out through his binoculars, raising and lowering his riding crop like a bandleader each time a salvo screamed away.

The pitch of the barrels rose steadily, heralding the approach of the French infantrymen. The Cherna river had risen even higher, eliminating any idea of retreat. The gun angle rose from fifty degrees through sixty to seventy-five degrees. Each shell they fired exploded closer to their position. The white phosphorous trails jumped out from the center like a blooming flower. Three and four at a time, the ghostly patterns leaped to life in front of them like giant white spiders, devouring everything caught underneath them.

Captain Hoxa continued to adjust fire while looking through the binoculars. "Up two degrees! Up one! Up one!" The operators raised the pitch until the guns were fully erect. Topped out, the shells arced a mile upward but landed a mere three-hundred yards away. Hoxa turned and looked up against the rain at the raised muzzles, disgusted that they would go no higher. He looked up to heaven as though he wished he could shoot the shells straight up.

"Ready!" shouted the four breech men at once. The hair stood up on the back of Vasili's neck. His eyes locked with Hoxa's just as a flash hit the number three barrel behind the captain’s head, illuminating everything. Hoxa's face contorted as he mouthed the command to fire, his speech stolen. The deafening crash of thunder that immediately followed the lightning seemed to jump out of his open mouth. Vasili stood transfixed by the scene, studying every detail of Hoxa's menacing face; the caked mud on his unwavering brow, the lean jaw of determination, the steady eye of wrath.

The blast knocked the breech operator and trigger man back several feet. The loader and ordnance handler were miraculously unaffected. They stood stunned and confused about what hit them.

"Reload and fire at will!" Hoxa shouted before turning to monitor the exploding shells. "Hurry boys! Hurry!" he shouted while looking through the field glasses. "It's going to be close!"