Crossword-Solution: FIRER 5 letters, 38 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Then thinks I: 'I'll just go a little bit, And see wot the doose I can make of it,' And it seemed to come from the mouth of a pit: 'Christmas!' sez I, 'a _MINE.'_ "Then 'ere's the part wot I can't explain: I wanted to make for 'ome again, But somethin' was blazin' inside me brain, So I crawled to the trench instead; Then I saw the bullet 'ead of a 'Un, And 'e stood by a rapid-firer gun, And I lifted a rock and I 'it 'im one, And 'e dropped like a chunk o' lead.

The heaviest gun of this type is the 10.5 centimetre (4 1/4-inch) quick-firer, throwing a shell weighing nearly forty pounds, with an initial velocity of 2,333 feet per second.

When the gun is loaded the bolt which holds the compressor back is withdrawn, either by the hand for manual firing, or by the action of the automatic closing of the breech when the arm is being used as a quick-firer.

Men whose nerves had been steeled to the crash of the big guns, or the monotonous roar of Maxims and the rattle of Mauser fire, found a new terror in the malignant 'ploop-plooping' of the automatic quick-firer.

Ian Hamilton at Hector Spruit found the remains of many guns, which included two of our horse artillery twelve-pounders, two large Creusot guns, two Krupps, one Vickers-Maxim quick firer, two pompoms and four mountain guns.