She sears a path for the infantry

You can't describe the moral lift,
 when in the fight your spirit weary,

hears above the hostile fire

your own artillery.
Shells score the air like wavy hair
from a forward battery.
As regimental cannon crack
while from positions further back,
in bitter sweet song overhead
crashing discordantly
Division's pounding joins the attack;
Mother-like she belches shell;
Glorious it flies, and well,
As, with a hissing screaming squall,
A roaring furnace, giving all,
she sears a path for the infantry...."

Aleksandr Tvardovskiy, from the poem Vasily Tyorkin, 1943