it struck the ground it exploded with an
awful concussion, and dirt and sandbags flew. It was a big trench
mortar, and we soon found that if you saw it in time you could dodge
it. Fritzie had a special spite at the "Glory Hole," and every little
while he would strafe it. About this time we received our first supply
of trench mortars, and I assure you we enjoyed using them. They were
big round balls weighing about sixty pounds, and they looked something
like the English plum pudding. We called them "Plum Puddin's." I
don't know what Fritzie called them, but he got them whether he called
them or not. They had long steel handles and were easily thrown; no
doubt the Germans were just as busy dodging ours as we were getting out
of the way of theirs.

For the next couple of months nothing of any importance happened, and
all we seemed to do was fill sandbags with mud, dig new trenches, clean
out old ones, and wade through mud; and such mud! so many men wading
through it worked it up and made it like glue--in some places it was up
to the waist and many a man got stuck and had to wait till some one
came along and pulled him out--through it all our little bunch stuck
together and had lots of fun laughing at each other's misfortunes. We
were usually on the same working parties and listening-posts; working
on the latter gave us eyes like cats, though I can tell you that it is
no fun staring out into "No Man's Land" (the space between the German
lines and ours) for hours at a time, not daring to move or speak. We
had a wire with us connected with the trench, for a listening-post is
always an advanced position, and we used a code of signals. One pull
meant "Send up a flare, we want to have a good look around," two pulls
"All's well," three "Hostile patrol is out in No Man's Land," and if we
threw the bomb that we always carried it meant that the Germans were
coming and it gave a general alarm. We had only had the one brush with
Fritzie, and the discomforts of the trenches began to get on our
nerves; we would much rather have been mixed up in the real fighting.
Of course when we were off on rest we had clean clothes, better grub,
and our letters and parcels from home; coming up to Christmas the
latter became more numerous, and we usually found a bunch waiting for
us. We were just like one big family, and the boys who got parcels
shared up with those who hadn't any; Bob would pick up Tommy's parcel,
look at the name, and sa