leading down 107 feet, and shooting out from this
shaft were two main tunnels--these tunnels were four feet high and
about three in width, and they ran under "No Man's Land" and past the
first line of German trenches, the object being to reach a small wood
and lay a mine under some pill-boxes that were causing us a lot of
trouble. These pill-boxes were machine gun emplacements made of
concrete, and our heavy shells had no effect on them. Our only chance
of getting them was to blow them up with a mine. When I went in, there
was still quite a distance to go, for the wood lay behind the second
line of German trenches.

I was set to work on one of these tunnels, and using pick and shovel
seemed mighty hard at first; what made it harder to stand was the lack
of fresh air--there was no place for the air to get in excepting
through the main shaft, and that was about four hundred yards away.
Then too, we could never rest ourselves by standing upright, and the
constant bending of the back was torture until we got used to it.
However, our shift only lasted for eight hours, and then we went out on
rest for twenty-four hours, and our rest billets were three miles back,
so they were fairly quiet. Altogether the work was a pleasant change
when our muscles got hardened to it; and there was always something
interesting turning up. Of course the Germans had their tunnels too,
and they were trying to reach our lines. Often we could hear each
other working and sometimes one party would send in a torpedo to block
the other's tunnel. I remember the first one they sent us. That day I
was working at the bottom of the shaft hitching sandbags to the rope by
which they were pulled to the top. Skinny was coming down the ladder
in the shaft, and when he was about ten feet from the bottom, the
torpedo was fired. It just missed our tunnel and the concussion was so
great that it gave us a great shaking up. Poor Skinny lost his hold on
the ladder and fell into two feet of water. I was scared stiff, for I
didn't know what had happened, but when I caught sight of Skinny
sitting in the water I just roared. Skinny sat there with his head
above water making no attempt to move, but when I laughed he looked up
indignantly and said, "Blime, mite, you'd cackle if a fellar broke his
bleedin' neck," and then while I continued laughing he cursed the
Germans with every variety of oath to which he could lay his tongue,
vowing what he was going to do t