Under the Gun
Eamonn Fitzgerald posted the following at Rainy Day and, at my suggestion that it fit nicely on this blog devoted to Arts and Ammo, he has graciously given permission to reproduce it.
There we were, at the Imperial War Museum in London, standing under the barrel of a 15-inch naval gun. In 1914, this was the most powerful of the big guns used by Royal Navy battleships. It weighed 100 tons and, at maximum range, could fire a 2,000 lb (876 kg) shell 16.5 miles (29 km). It was used on D-Day to shell enemy positions around Caen, but it also saw action in 1920 during the Greco-Turkish War. Which led to thoughts of that famous 1571 naval battle with the Ottoman Turks in which 32,000 died and Miguel de Cervantes fought alongside the “lean and foolish knight” he would later immortalize in Don Quixote.
“Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath / (Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) / And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, / Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain, / And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade… / (But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)” Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton
