his head.

Did that muddy old trench look good when we tumbled in? Oh, Boy!
The staff was tickled to pieces and complimented us all. We were
sent out of the lines that night and in billets got hot food,
high-grade "fags", a real bath, a good stiff rum ration, and
letters from home.

Next morning we heard the results of the raid. One party of twelve
never returned. Besides that we lost seven men killed. The German
loss was estimated at about one hundred casualties, six machine
guns and several dug-outs destroyed, and one mine shaft put out of
business. We also brought back documents of value found by one
party in an officer's dug-out.

Blofeld got the military cross for the night's work, and several of
the enlisted men got the D.C.M.

Altogether it was a successful raid. The best part of it was
getting back.

CHAPTER IV

A FEW DAYS' REST IN BILLETS

After the strafing we had given Fritz on the raid, he behaved
himself reasonably well for quite a while. It was the first raid
that had been made on that sector for a long time, and we had no
doubt caught the Germans off their guard.

Anyhow for quite a spell afterwards they were very "windy" and
would send up the "Very" lights on the slightest provocation and
start the "typewriters" a-rattling. Fritz was right on the job with
his eye peeled all the time.

In fact he was so keen that another raid that was attempted ten
days later failed completely because of a rapidly concentrated and
heavy machine-gun fire, and in another, a day or two later, our men
never got beyond our own wire and had thirty-eight casualties out
of fifty men engaged.

But so far as anything but defensive work was concerned, Fritz was
very meek. He sent over very few "minnies" or rifle grenades, and
there was hardly any shelling of the sector.

Directly after the raid, we who were in the party had a couple of
days "on our own" at the little village of Bully-Grenay, less than
three miles behind the lines. This is directly opposite Lens, the
better known town which figures so often in the dispatches.

Bully-Grenay had been a place of perhaps one thousand people. It
had been fought over and through and around early in the war, and
was pretty well battered up. There were a few houses left unhit and
the town hall and several shops. The rest of the place was ruins,
but about two hundred of the inhabitants still stuck to their old
homes. For some reason the Germans did not shell Bully-G