How would you interpret ‘seventy-sevens’ in the context? How would you interpret ‘seventy-sevens’ in the third sentence ‘They were seventy-sevens and came with a whishing rush of air..’? Does it mean shells of seventy-seven caliber? Thanks. It’s from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. the context: Two carabinieri held the car up. A shell had fallen and while we waited three others fell up the road. They were seventy-sevens and came with a whishing rush of air, a hard bright burst and flash and then gray smoke that blew across the road. The carabinieri waved us to go on. Passing where the shells had landed I avoided the small broken places and smelled the high explosive and the smell of blasted clay and stone and freshly shattered flint. I drove back to Gorizia and our villa and, as I said, went to call on Miss Barkley, who was on duty.