ing decision, sir, or
perhaps when you reached down to pick it up, neither your hand nor
the bomb would be there. They'd have gone off together, sir."

"Have you ever been hurt in your handling of bombs?" I asked.

Surprise in the bland blue eyes. "Oh, no, sir! Bombs are well behaved
if you treat them right. It's all in being thoughtful and considerate of
them!" Meanwhile, he was jerking at some kind of a patent fuse set in
a shell of high explosive. "This is a poor kind, sir. It's been discarded,
but I thought that you might like to see it. Never did like it. Always
making trouble!"

More distance between the audience and the performer. "Now I've
got it, sir--get down, sir!" The audience carried out instructions to the
letter, as army regulations require. It got behind the protection of one
of the practice-trench traverses. He threw the discard behind another
wall of earth. There was a sharp report, a burst of smoke, and some
fragments of earth were tossed into the air.

In a small affair of two hundred yards of trench a week before, it was
estimated that the British and the Germans together threw about five
thousand bombs in this fashion. It was enough to sadden any
Minister of Munitions. However, the British kept the trench.

"Do the men like to become bombers?" I asked the subaltern.

"I should say so! It puts them up in front. It gives them a chance to
throw something, and they don't get much cricket in France, you see.
We had a pupil here last week who broke the throwing record for
distance. He was as pleased as Punch with himself. A first-class
bombing detachment has a lot of pride of corps."

To bomb soon became as common a verb with the army as to
bayonet. "We bombed them out" meant a section of trench taken by
throwing bombs. As you know, a trench is dug and built with
sandbags in zigzag traverses. In following the course of a trench it is
as if you followed the sides of the squares of a checker board up and
down and across on the same tier of squares. The square itself is a
bank of earth, with the cut on either side and in front of it. When a
bombing-party bombs its way into possession of a section of German
trench, there are Germans under cover of the traverses on either
side. They are waiting around the corner to shoot the first British head
that shows itself.

"It is important that you and not the Boches chuck the bombs over
first," explained the subaltern. "Also, that you get them into the right