n living with us, and when we were firing he was
right on the spot. Of course with our gun going so much of the time
Fritzie came back with everything he had, but he never could find out
where we really were. The greatest drawback to our new position was
the lack of water. Before the Germans retired they had filled all the
wells with barbed wire. The Germans tried to gas us out, and sometimes
they would pelt us with gas shells; all night long we had to sleep with
our gas masks on. On the whole, our position here was much better than
what we were used to, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but after we had
been here for a few days we were taken out on rest and then sent to
another place.

This time we went in at Liever, and our positions here were hellish. I
don't know how we lived through it; we were there four days, and in
that time our guns were either blown up or buried at least twice a day.
One night Tommy and I were lying in a hole that we had dug right beside
our gun, and without letting us know, our fellows in the trenches sent
over a cloud of gas. The Germans always bombarded where gas was sent
over, and this was no exception to the rule. They started at once.
Tommy and I were lying in the most exposed part of the trench and Tommy
was snoring, when with a crash the shells began bursting over us. I
wakened Tommy, for one gets so that he sleeps through everything, and
we lay there wondering what would happen next. Suddenly, _bang_! a
shell hit the side of the hole we were in and filled the hole with
smoke and covered us with dirt. I said, "Come on, Tommy, let's go down
the trench a bit where it isn't so blamed hot." "Naw," says Tommy,
"it's a long chance on him hitting us again." The words were hardly
out of his mouth, when crash came another shell and it buried us in
dirt this time. We were just scrambling out and Tommy was ahead, when
_bang_! another shell landed right in front of us. Tommy went still
and I grabbed him. "Tommy, Tommy, have they got you, kid?" No answer,
and I shook him again; he squirmed and started to swear, and I knew
that he was all right. We scrambled out and were beating it down the
trench when an officer came out of a dugout and asked us what was the
matter. We told him and he said, "What size were the shells that came
over?" "Huh," said Tommy, "they was comin' too damned fast for me to
measure 'em." The officer grinned, and we went on. At the end of four
days we were reli