Written for The American Legion Weekly a year after the war, the attached article tells the story of the five American naval batteries that were mounted on specially made rail cars and deployed along the Western Front. The article is two pages long and is filled with interesting facts as to the whereabouts of their assorted deployments and what was expected of the naval crews who worked them.
“The Germans found the range of Battery 1 on October 5 and opened a spunky retaliatory fire. A shell burst directly over the big gun with no casualties. Shells fell on both sides of the train, but only one direct hit was scored. It sent a bucketful of wash clothes scattering over the landscape.”
“The sailor is a peculiarly adaptable fellow. His life afloat embraces many phases, of life ashore. He had his land legs every minute and his shooting eye all the time he served the guns on the Western Front. Numerically he was a minor factor. In the great sea of olive drab he was only a speck of navy blue. What he lacked in numbers, however, he quite equalized in armament. His sixty-foot weapon and its 1,400-pound projectile aided him materially in becoming an important element in the fighting that finally satisfied the Hun.”
This site has more articles about the rail-mounted guns of the First World War.
