hey are made of steel or iron and designed to burst into
small fragments, each of which constitutes a deadly missile. On the
other hand, the "mines" thrown by the Minenwerfer, are merely light
sheet-metal containers for heavy charges of high explosives (T. N. T.
or tri-nitro-toluol as a rule), and depend for their effectiveness on
the shock and blasting effect of the detonation. They have been
increasing in size continually. At first we called them "sausages,"
then "rum-jars" (they resembled the ordinary one-gallon rum jar in
size and shape), then they became "flying pigs" and by this time, I
have no doubt, new and still more expressive names have been applied
to them.

The havoc created in a trench by one of the large ones passes belief.
The strongest dug-out is wiped out in a twinkle; whole sections of
parapet are obliterated, and where was a strong, well-built wall eight
feet or more in height there remains a hole or "crater" fifteen or
twenty feet in diameter and several feet deep. Any man who happens to
be within this area is, of course, blown to atoms, while frequently
men in the near vicinity, but not exposed to the direct blast, are
killed instantaneously by the shock. Medical men say that the effect
is identical to that known as "caisson sickness," and is caused by the
formation of bubbles of carbonic acid gas in the blood vessels. Not
being a "medico" I can not vouch for this, but you can take it for
what it is worth.

In daylight it is not difficult to dodge these devilish things and
even at night, if they come one at a time, it is possible to escape
the most of them, but when they come over in flocks, as they sometimes
do, it is more a matter of luck than anything else.

CHAPTER XIV

FOURTEEN DAYS' FIGHTING

[Illustration: Lewis Gun in Action in Front-Line Trench.]

By this time there was no doubt of the enemy's superiority in
artillery, and to make matters worse, the craters were changing hands
daily or even hourly. We never knew, for sure, whether our troops or
those of the enemy held any certain crater, except the ones on each
end, numbers one and six (we held them throughout the entire two
months of fighting), but numbers two, three, four and five were
debatable ground for several weeks. On two occasions I made the
complete circuit of all the craters at night, going through the
Canadian trench and coming back via what had been our original front
line. On one of these trips I was accompani