Gunflash

He picked them out, remembering how he had stared at them every day for a week, trying to pick up the Vichy gunflashes but seeing nothing but the bare heat-shimmering hills; remembering how in the night you could see the gunflashes ...

Then the German guns suddenly went off with one or two gunflashes faintly visible to the side of the smoke-screen. The Russians got ready to answer. Somewhere high up, a German shell whined, harmlessly, like a mosquito.

"Williams thinks it's important. I've been watching those gunflashes out there. They've all been to the east or southeast. We've been thinking the war was out there...but I saw single gunflashes...four of them...about south southwest, just before daylight."