lied vaguely
that steps would be taken, and that an officer and detachment of his
battalion must receive a course of instruction.

The Colonel replied with spirit that he was glad to hear all this, but
in the meantime what was he to do to prevent his battalion being blown
piecemeal out of their trenches?

It all ended eventually in the arrival of a trench-mortar and a pile of
bombs from somewhere and a very youthful and very much annoyed
Artillery subaltern from somewhere else. The Colonel was most
enormously relieved by these arrivals, but his high hopes were a good
deal dashed by the artilleryman.

That youth explained that he was in effect totally ignorant of
trench-mortars and their ways, that he had been shown the thing a week
ago, had it explained to him--so far as such a rotten toy could be
explained--and had fired two shots from it. However, he said briskly,
if off-handedly, he was ready to have a go with it and see what he
could do.

The trench-mortar was carried down to the forward trench, and on the
way down behind it the youngster discoursed to the O.C. of the
Asterisks on the 'awful rot' of a gunner officer being chased off on to
a job like this--any knowledge of gunnery being entirely superfluous
and, indeed, wasted on such a kid's toy. And the O.C., looking at the
trench-mortar being prepared, made a mental remark about 'the mouths of
babes' and the wise words thereof.

The weapon is easily described. It was a mere cylinder of cast iron,
closed at one end, open at the other, and with a roomy 'touch-hole' at
the closed end. The carriage consisted of two uprights on a base, with
mortar between them and pointing up at an angle of about forty-five
degrees.

The charge was little packets of gunpowder tied up in paper in measured
doses. The bomb was a tin-can--an empty jam-tin, mostly--filled with a
bursting charge and fragments of metal, and with an inch or so of the
fuse protruding.

The piece was loaded by throwing a few packets of powder into the
muzzle, poking them with a piece of stick to burst the paper, and
carefully sliding the bomb down on top of the charge. A length of fuse
was poked into the touch-hole and the end lit, sufficient length being
given to allow the lighter to get round the nearest corner before the
mortar fired.

The whole thing was too rubbishy and cheaply and roughly made to have
been fit for use as a 'kid's toy,' as the subaltern called it. To
imagine it being use