Interesting pictures. True enough the gunners dont look particularly animated, however, 'gun drill' it is not. They are unlikely to be dressed so casually in training, so I would tend to suspect this picture is active service.
They appear to be loading a round and the gunner on the left appears to be holding either a charge bag or a swab. In the second picture a shell casing ( presumably holding the correct charge number) is being loaded into the breach.
If the ground is hard, it would not be a given that the field space embeds. Additionally the wheels have the wooden 'retarders' which assist to stabilise the rolling wheels on firing.
Whether the field space embeds is also dependant on the charge number (I.e. how strong it is) and the elevation ( forces acting on the carriage).
The gun position itself appears to be fairly established. There is good footage of 6" howitzers firing during WW1. The famous one is where the gun is next to the enormous barn and all the slates fall off of the roof with the shock wave. The spade is not embeced in this footage.
My opinions only chaps.
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