ted back, only to
discover that the place where he had come over was now occupied by
several soldiers, and, being unable to find another opening, was
obliged to hide out and remain inside the enemy's lines all day. The
next night he managed to slip back, none the worse for his adventure.

Such things are being done every night and some men consider it the
greatest sport in the world to go out alone and spend hours under the
lee of a German parapet listening to the Heinies talk. Soon after
that, orders were issued in our brigade that no one was to go out
alone so when we wanted to prowl around we had to start in pairs. As
soon as we were over the parapet we would split and each go his way,
to meet later at an appointed place. One man, alone, can get away
with a lot of things that would be impossible for two, but we observed
the letter, if not the spirit, of the order.

We had cleared out one of the compartments of the big barn at
Captain's Post, carefully plugging up all the shell-holes with
sand-bags and other materials so that no light could filter through,
and there, at night, would build a great fire in the middle of the
stone floor and proceed to enjoy ourselves. Usually one or two guns
would do a little strafing every night: simply going out into the
field in front of the building and setting up the gun in a convenient
shell-hole. After a while, from our own observations and from
information supplied by the artillery, we occasionally located an
enemy battery within range of our guns. Then we would have a regular
"strafing party." Laying all the guns so as to deliver a converging
fire on the battery position, we would, as soon as it was dark, open
up on them, knowing that they would be moving about in the open and
exposed to fire. We could always tell when we had "stung" them, for
they would invariably come back at us with a tremendous fire,
shooting wildly at everything within our lines in the vain endeavor to
locate us. I'll bet we caused them to expend a hundred thousand rounds
of perfectly good ammunition in this way, but we never had a man hit
while at the game. The German is not much of a hand for night
artillery work unless you stir him up, but we could always get a rise
out of him, and often did it, just for amusement. This is what is
called "getting his wind up." The same thing can be done in the front
line by a few men opening up with five or ten rounds, rapid fire,
directed just over Heinie's parapet. I