re couldn't be a stir
behind our lines but we would be treated to a salvo of shells. In
fact, we had orders not to move around in the daytime. But after the
balloons were gone we could go about with comparative freedom. Even
one man would attract the attention of these German eyes. Our old boy,
Charlie Pound, was a runner or dispatch carrier between the front line
and Headquarters, and he often came up to see us when we were in the
line. One day he said, "There's a fat Fritzie in that balloon that I'd
like to get my hands on; he must have a grudge against me, for he
shells me every time I go down the communication trench." So Charlie
was tickled to death when that particular balloon was brought down.

Well, Jack, our next trip in was at Hill 60, and it was a warm
spot--not artillery fire this time, but trench mortars. Every morning
Fritzie would send us "sausages" for breakfast; they came at the rate
of one a minute. It wasn't that they caused so many casualties, but
they made so much work. Every day Fritzie would blow up our front line
and we would have to build it up again each night under machine gun
fire. We took it in turns, half of us would be on working parties and
the other half on outpost duty. One night several of us were down in a
cutting on a bombing-post. The cutting had once been the Ypres
Commines railway and it ran across the German lines as well as through
ours. We had strong posts there to keep the Fritzies back in case they
took a notion to come over. In the daytime it was exposed to rifle
fire. We were sitting there this night when our Corporal came running
in and said, "Hurry back to the trench, there's a show going to start."
He had scarcely finished speaking when the trench mortar bombardment
opened up, and we had barely hit the trench when a sausage landed on
the very spot where we had been. The next few minutes were very
exciting and we were kept busy dodging the sausages. We could easily
see them coming through the darkness, for the fuse burned and left a
trail of sparks. One would have thought they were rockets, if he
hadn't seem them before. Then Fritzie opened up his artillery, and
things got very warm indeed. We had several casualties, but once more
our little bunch was lucky. We expected Fritzie would try to come
over, so a bunch of us got out on the parapet and threw bombs and the
others kept up a steady fire with their rifles. Our trench mortars
were doing great wor